by S. B. Niccum
“I think she can see me, or hear me, or sense me, and I don’t want you to scare her. What are you doing with that?”
“It’s a Flaming Sword,” Russell says, matter-of-factly. “Didn’t you get one before coming down?”
“No,” I whine. “They’re for Cherubs only.”
“No, not for Cherubs only. Any angel can carry one, as long as there is sufficient reason and need, and I’d say that there is sufficient reason and need at this point in time.”
I narrow my eyes and look at him shrewdly.
“Don’t you give me that look; my wife gave me that same look when she saw me leaving with it. You’ll be glad I took this sword, you’ll see.”
“So Cherubs are just lending out their swords to any angel who wants one?”
“Yes, lots of angels have one, and I suggest you go get one. You might need it.”
“For what?”
“Haven’t you seen all those cast-outs and all those dark spirits roaming around? Our instructions are to watch over our mortals, help them fight the war, and return any escaped dark spirit back to Prison. How else are we going to accomplish all that without a sword?”
“I—I wasn’t told that, I was just told to watch over my mortal.”
“Didn’t you read the disclaimer at the entrance of the Angelic Building? It says so right there, very clearly.”
“I must have missed that. I was a little preoccupied.”
“Yeah, thinking about Alex and how you should be getting him out, instead of your mission?”
I nod in reply.
“Well, it’s probably just as well. You wouldn’t be able to appreciate a sword like this,” he says tenderly as he looks his over. “Not to mention that you’re too small to carry one anyway.”
“You’re barely big enough yourself,” I tell him, as he holds the sword by the hilt and gives it a few spins, making it light up like a torch. The sword is almost as long as he is tall, certainly about my own size. “It’s exactly the same height as my wife, Nancy, five foot four. It’s kind of funny to pick it up and fling it around like this,” he says as he spins the sword like a Polynesian fire dancer. “It’s kind of like spinning my wife.” Sure enough, he’s hardly done saying those words, when he loses control of the sword, and it slips out of his hands, knocking over a pile of old boxes and spilling their contents on to the attic rafters. “Uh-oh.” He looks up at me with a pouty look.
“How on earth?” I start to marvel, when I remember Samantha and her friend downstairs. So I hit Russell on the shoulder, forgetting that he’s not really my age, as he looks, but my senior—my husband’s grandfather—and that I should probably treat him with more respect. But he’s acting like a child, so I’m a little confused.
“The Flaming Swords can affect mortal, spiritual, and resurrected matter at the same time,” he whispers, a little too late, now that we’ve spooked our mortals.
Not moving a muscle, we both stand stock still, as we hear our two mortals scampering up the stairs and opening the attic door. Once they’re up, they take a moment to look around, using a log from the fireplace like a torch.
The boy, Pete, crouches on the rafters and helps Samantha up. They both look around with fear imprinted on their faces. “You heard that, right?”
Samantha nods in reply. “Look! Over there, those boxes! That must have been what we heard.”
Bending down to avoid hitting her head, she makes her way toward the boxes, and us. When she gets closer, she pauses and looks around, shivering again. Suspiciously, she lets her gaze rest almost right on my person, leaving me wondering if she can see me. “I feel strange here, like we’re being watched,” she says as she turns her attention back to the boxes that have been knocked over.
“Nonsense,” Pete affirms. “There can’t possibly be any cameras here,” he says as he looks around the cramped space. “So, who did all these things belong to?” Pete asks, as he makes his way to the boxes that Russell whacked with the sword.
“I have no idea. This house has been in my family for generations. It was rented out for many years, so it could be anyone’s, I guess.”
“As long as we can find something of use, I don’t care. They’re all dead anyway.” Pete says dryly as he ransacks the contents of the boxes.
“She’s one of my descendants?” Russell asks, suddenly shocked. This is now a total game changer for him.
I shrug. “She must be.”
“Let’s exchange! I want to be her angel.”
“Are you kidding me? I’m not breaking any more rules. You were assigned to him, I’m assigned to her. I’m not switching. Besides, he’ll be kin to you soon enough.”
“What? That—. You think my little, great-great-great—whatever—granddaughter will marry this individual?”
“She likes him,” I point out. “Oh, come on, Russell, he can’t be that bad!”
Russell deliberates for a moment, filtering all he knows about his mortal through new fatherly eyes. “I suppose he’s not all that bad. He’s just—just.”
“What?”
“He’s too much like me. Too eager to fight, to take on these ROWE soldiers, and take on a lost cause. He can’t do that and take care of her.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of her. I won’t let anything bad happen to her. I’ll go get a sword and I’ll do what it takes,” I assure him. Russell’s head starts shaking. “What? Why can’t I? You don’t think I can protect her?”
“You really just showed up, didn’t you? You didn’t read a single disclaimer, or take a class, or anything.”
“No,” I say, defensively. “Why?”
“Keeping them alive is no longer our mission. It’s not any angel’s mission.”
“Then what is?”
“We just have to keep them safe from the cast-outs and the dark spirits. All we can do is help our mortals be strong enough to not be fooled by the evil spirits. We are just trying to keep them good, so when they die, they can go straight to Paradise, not Prison.”
I look at him incredulously. “Really? That’s the best we can hope for them?”
Russell nods, grimly. “I’m afraid that this is a battle they will not win.”
“It can’t be. Good will prevail, it always does,” I say, shaking my head emphatically.
“Good will prevail, but this war will not be ended with guns, or bombs, or civil combat. It’ll end when all the escaped dark spirits go back to prison, and all the cast-out spirits along with their leader are captured and bound. This war is more spiritual than mortal, even for them.” He points to our two little mortals, no older than sixteen, both of them. “If they want to win, they’ll have to be good. And by good I mean, moral, up right, kind-hearted. The last thing we want for them is to become hardened fighters, cynical, calloused, or cruel.”
“I see,” I say, feeling that old guilt come back, remembering that thanks to me, all of this is happening. But the guilt doesn’t crush me this time, not like it used to. He lifted that weight from my shoulders. Sadly, He carries it for me now, and all I can do is what I promised Him I would do. I take comfort in knowing that if I do my part, small as it may be, it’s enough for Him. Still, my heart aches and I feel slightly queasy as I watch these two poor souls shiver with cold, rummaging through our old things, trying to find something useful.
Pete opens one box, and finds a trove of Alex’s High School things, trophies, report cards, yearbooks, pictures, his graduation cap, and his diploma. Pete goes through it with mild curiosity, since none of those things are of any use to him now. “Alexander Dane Preston,” he reads the diploma then turns to the P’s in the yearbook. “So that’s you…isn’t it weird?” he says, as Samantha cranes her neck to look at the picture. “He probably lived to a ripe old age, then died. But he’s immortalized in this picture as a kid our age forever,” he remarks as he looks at the picture of Alex when he was a junior in High School.“Who was he to you, again?”
Samantha shrugs. “I don’t know, I think I
had a great, great grandmother with that last name. Her parents died when she was young and she was raised by her aunt and uncle.”
“Maybe this guy grew up to be your great-great-grandmother’s uncle.”
Sam stares at the immobile picture of Alex for a moment. “Maybe,” she finally says, with a sigh.
“He did, but he never did live to a ripe old age,” I clarify.
“No,” Russell agrees, with sadness. “I blame myself, you know. That’s why I can’t Open. Well, one of the reasons anyway.”
“What do you blame yourself for?”
“His death, and my inability to explain things better to him. I’m always too…too, short with explanations. I reverted back to Admiral mode, when I should have been more thoughtful, more understanding. Death to me was welcomed. I should have understood him better,” Russell says glumly as he shakes his head.
“We can’t change the past, Russell, we can only hope to change the future,” I say trying to muster hope, but feeling an empty void inside of me, the void left by Alex. “For some reason, they are our responsibility right now. They might be the key that unlocks Alex’s prison door.”
“I hope you’re right,” he says dejectedly. I too could understand that feeling of helplessness when it comes to Alex. How could he of all people get lost like that?
“What’s wrong? You okay?” Pete asks concerned. “Do you hear something?”
“No, no.”
“Then what?”
Sam presses her lips together. “It’s more like, feeling,” she admits tentatively.
“Feeling? Feeling what?”
“I don’t know…a presence?”
“Like a ghost?”
She looks at him with fear in her eyes, fear that he will think her weird and then leave her. Suddenly, I can sense all her feelings pouring out to me—all her fears, all her hopes, everything she’s been mulling around in her head in that precise moment—they all come to me with a flood-like force, and I finally understand. She has my mother’s gift, the ability to sense spirits. I had learned from my mother that when she was growing up, she thought she was cursed in some way. My mother could feel the presence of all the cast-out spirits and she called them the shadows. She also felt the guiding presence of her grandmother, and that soothed her. This poor girl! With all the spirits that are going around nowadays—cast-outs, escaped prisoners, and us—she must be very paranoid.
“M—maybe,” she hesitates and looks at him with pleading eyes.
“Believe her,” Russell whispers in Pete’s ear. Suddenly, Pete’s face changes from total disbelief to the possibility. “Well, we are going through dead people’s things. Your family’s things no less.” He looks around the small attic and exhales a long held in breath. “But if they are here, I think they want us to go through their things, or they wouldn’t have tipped over these boxes for us to find—this!” He says as he pulls out an old ham radio from one of the fallen boxes.
“I gave that to Alex when he was ten!” Russell shouts, excited at the sight of the old thing. “To play with! I told him I would try to contact him while I was deployed.”
“What is that?” Sam asks, both relieved at Pete’s response and happy to see something of use.
“I’m not sure, but it looks old enough to work for us.” He leans in closer to Sam and whispers, as if he were telling a secret. “You know how I went underground to find the resistance.” Samantha nods encouragingly. “Well, I found them. And they are not only organized, but they have found a way to communicate with other organized rebellions from other parts of the country, and the world even!”
“How?” Both Samantha and Russell ask in unison.
“A primitive way of communicating, called Morse code.”
“Primitive?” Russell echoes with outrage, while Sam stares at Pete with rapt interest.
“Is this a Morse code?” Sam asks incredulously.
“No, this looks like a radio of sorts. See? He shows her the small print. “Ham radio. The Morse code contraption looks like a button that you tap. It was found in someone’s house, in much the same way we found this.” Pete sets the radio down, and frantically now, starts opening all the other boxes, ransacking through all our old things, looking for more treasures.
“Look!” Pete holds up Alex’s old Navy uniform and his dog tags. “Alexander Preston,” he reads. “The mystery of Alex Preston’s life keeps unfolding! He became a soldier.” Pete looks excitedly back at Sam, who is holding one of my favorite dresses that I designed. She too looks excited, but not so much about the uniform as she does about the dress. I can read her thoughts more easily now, and I can see that she’s having a brief daydream. She’s wearing that dress, and Pete is dressed in Alex’s old uniform, both looking dashing as they dance.
“Whose do you think this was?” She holds up my dress.
“Not his, I hope.” They both laugh and keep opening boxes. They find warm coats, and they don’t hesitate to put those on. Sam finds many of my dress sketches, mixed with some of Dorian’s pictures that he drew for me. I lean over her shoulder and observe with melancholy the things that used to be so dear to me in life. Some of those drawings I kept as my private treasure trove for years under my bed, hidden in a little valise. Over time, I filled the little thing full of these earthly gems that meant nothing to anyone else, but meant the world to me.
Sam pauses at the picture that Dorian drew of me, sitting under the relentless rain, hands covering my face, hiding the fear I felt. Shadowy figures are floating behind me, and Alex is approaching cautiously from in front of me. She studies this decaying picture with great interest. She knows it’s special, and the presence of those shadows does not go unnoticed by her.
“They exist, Sam. Good spirits and bad,” I whisper in her ear. “I’m her,” I say, pointing to the picture of the girl hiding her face, scared of the unseen, just like her. “I’m here to help you.”
She shivers, and I know she hears, or at least understands me. Her heart is racing, but I feel no fear coming from her. She knows this picture is relevant to her, she knows it proves something, but she’s not sure what yet. The girl in the picture could be her, or it could be someone else, just like her. She folds Dorian’s prophetic relic carefully and puts it in my old coat pocket—her coat pocket now.
Chapter 12
“Are you okay?” Pete asks, looking up from his treasure hunting.
“Yes, it’s nothing,” Samantha says, preoccupied, as she studies the rest of Dorian’s old pictures.
Pete tries to read her face for a minute, then, seeing nothing out of the ordinary, goes back to a neat pile of yearbooks and things that belonged to Alex. “Well, I think I can put together this guy’s life pretty well. Do you want to hear it?”
“Sure!” Sam says, trying to sound excited, as she puzzles over my own life, with all the odds and ends she has found in my little valise and boxes.
“Okay, here it goes. Alex was a pretty lucky guy of his time. He was student body president, apparently something important,” Pete adds as a side note. “He played a sport called football, something that only a select group of guys got to play, then married his high school sweetheart, Eugenia.” He looks up triumphantly. “He then enrolled in the military and was a soldier until he retired. Then he ran for political office, see?” He holds up one of Alex’s old campaign pins and flyers. “He must have had a nice cushy life. Probably had a few kids, and because he was a good guy, he took in your great-great-grandmother and raised her. He got old, then he died, probably in his sleep after a good meal.” Pete summed up taking great pleasure in his sleuthing skills.
“I wouldn’t be so sure, Pete,” Samantha reproves. “Besides, you say all that as if having a good life is a bad thing. And what makes you think that his wife’s name was Eugenia?”
“These pictures right here.” He holds all the yearbooks that had prom pictures of Alex with Eugenia next to him, the two of them, always being awarded as the “Cutest Couple,” “Prom King and
Queen,” or “Homecoming Royalty.”
“See? They went to every single dance together every year, and won some sort of contest every year. You can’t tell me that those two didn’t end up together.”
“Well, what about her?” Sam holds up one of my dresses as evidence. Pete fails to see the connection. “See the tag on this dress?” She points out.
“What about it?”
“It says, DeLeon. All these dresses say DeLeon.” She points to the strewn contents of one of the boxes that contained some of the inventory from my boutique’s dress line.
“So?”
“Look!” She holds up my fashion sketches with my signature scribbled at the bottom. “Same signature. Tess DeLeon.”
“So, maybe it’s a made up name for her dresses.”
“I don’t think so. Look at this last picture.” She points to Alex’s senior prom picture with Eugenia. Alex looked like he was merely enduring the night, and Eugenia looked like a spoiled child who was getting her way. “Why don’t you look her up? Tess DeLeon. See if she’s there.”
With grave intensity, I watch as Pete turns the pages of the yearbook looking for me. I want them to get this right, I want to be found. I need them to know that Alex married me, not Eugenia.
“I’ll be,” Pete murmurs. “Tess DeLeon.”
Samantha scoots next to him and leans into the book, looking at my picture carefully. “She’s pretty,” she mumbles. But she frowns, perplexed. “I wonder who this is, then.” She places the sketch of Celeste that Dorian had drawn for me—my mystery ghost—at the time. When Dorian had drawn that picture of Celeste, I knew that she was the presence that I had felt since childhood, but I didn’t know for sure who she was until much later.