Angels of Destruction

by Keith Donohue

  “What are you doing out in this freezing snow?”

  “I'm a snow man myself, of sorts, lost in it every chance I get.”

  Norah's nose began to run, and she wiped it with her sleeve. She hacked out a cough, mucus rattling in her chest.

  The man twisted his features into a half frown. “And just who are you, little friend?” He bent closer to the bars, close enough for her to see into his eyes. Where her reflection should have appeared on his pupils, nothing but misery, and she knew at once what sort of creature he was. The depth of his emptiness scared her, and she looked away. In the sound of his very breath blew a cold wind over the icy tundra. She could sense the glacial river pulsing in his veins, the utter silence of the transparent frozen heart. In the wink of an atom, the clap of his hands, her time would cease to be. “Tell me who you are.”

  “I am an angel,” she stammered. “A messenger. A nothing become something so that they may see and understand. The time is at hand.”

  “I have been following you and know where you have been. What time is at hand? The end? Whose end?”

  “I am not sure.”

  “Does anyone know that an angel has come?” Around them the snow undulated and sank to the ground. He reached between the spaces of the gate and grabbed her thin arms, pulling her toward him fiercely. Her body slammed into the bars and her face pressed hard against the cold metal. A rabbity cry escaped from the back of her throat. “Have you told anyone you are an angel?”

  “Sean, a boy, suspects. But he doesn't believe. No one else yet.”

  “Tell me why you are here.” He tightened his grip. Drops of blood bubbled from the corners of her mouth.

  “Because she wanted me to come. Margaret Quinn.” She was losing her breath. “She called me into being.”

  “And yet you have told the boy. Why have you broken the first rule of safety?”

  “Sean needs to be saved too, but he does not know how to ask. None of them do. They no longer truly believe.”

  “You're not very smart, Norah Quinn. I could crush you right now and nobody would know. You cannot stay here, do you understand? You cannot become an angel for those who do not ask.”

  She could not answer. Blood streamed from her nostrils, and her eyes rolled white. An anguished moan rose from deep within.

  His skin reddened, and he began to shake as he lost his strength and stability. Through clenched teeth, he asked again. “What makes you think that anyone needs to believe in angels?”

  “All need some reason to hope, to believe.” Twisting her shoulders, she escaped him and stepped back from the fence.

  The man appeared powerless and beaten. Trapped by the bars that separated them, he could not reach her and was frozen in place. The ground beneath him rumbled, and around his form a brilliance gathered and intensified with each word. “You are a fool. They will not believe you without some sacrifice from you. You cannot stay with her. You cannot stay with the boy. You must destroy your world to save theirs.”

  There was a flash as brief and brilliant as a thousand suns bursting at once, and then too quickly he was gone, before she could speak another word. Vanished into a fog of snow. When she could no longer perceive his form, it seemed to her that he had never been there, as if he had been a snowman she had rolled and patted and molded in her mind, a shape that melted away quickly when she forgot him for just that one moment. Soon even the impression he made in the snow would be gone.

  With the back of her sleeve she wiped the blood from her nose and lips, and then she rolled the scarf over her mouth to begin the walk home. As she left the schoolyard, she was humming tunes Mrs. Quinn had sung around the house, songs from her daughter's childhood, when she would bathe Erica in the tub or gently push her on a swing. Lost to the music of her imagination, she almost failed to notice that someone had built a snowman in the middle of nowhere. Wound round his collar was a silk scarf, and on his head was a rakish brown fedora. A few children apparently had braved the storm to create it, and at the sight, she burst with laughter.

  He was giving her a final chance, and she knew what must be done. The time was at hand. The stranger had been one of them—a destroyer of worlds. Angel of destruction.

  30

  Each student cut a slit into the top of a decorated shoebox to ready for valentines. Mrs. Patterson relished the mayhem and enjoyed picking one or two children to spy upon as they navigated the crowded aisles in search of best friends or private crushes, tokens of affection in hand. She loved to see the smiles of the giver and the recipient, and even cherished the disdain on certain faces, particularly the boys, reminding her that they were growing up and would soon be beyond such innocent gestures.

  Caught between the nostalgia for their youth and the desire to put such childish things behind them, the third graders moved like sheep in search of the shepherd. Some secretly loved the ceremony and saw the cards as tokens of genuine affection, but the more cynical or shy signed the cheapest store-bought cards—emblazoned with cartoon characters making gentle puns—with just their name or desultory or ironic greetings. An occasional oath toward an enemy. Two of the more notorious claimed to have forgotten completely the special day, which drew the silent approbation of the class. When Mrs. Patterson signaled the exchange, Norah stood first, hefted the lid to her desk, and started the rite with such joy that nearly everyone forgot their trepidation. Red hearts beat a tattoo on box after box.

  “This is for you,” Sean Fallon said, waiting for her at his desk. “Open it.”

  Sliding her index finger under the fold, she broke the seal, removed the card, and flipped it to see the face. A collage of dozens of birds, photographs clipped from magazines, illustrations stolen from old books. Bird by bird, she scanned the surface, covered so densely that space barely existed between any two wings. Eagles in flight, two swans at swim, nesting plovers, a redwing blackbird screaming from a cattail, songbirds in their singing, vireo, cardinal, mockingbird, a hummer humming in the corner. A cartoon roadrunner sped across the bottom edge. Inside in his early cursive: Birds fill the air, when you are here. Happy Valentine's Day. She felt like throwing her arms around his bony shoulders, smothering him until he cried. Looking up from the words, she saw his unabashed hope, his bright smile. A smile that said the world will one day crush such a boy, but not today, and she kissed him lightly on the lips. It lasted less than a moment and all of his life, one quick kiss. Looking around to see if anyone was watching, Norah handed him her card in the same motion, but he was too stunned to open it, so she took it back and pushed the valentine into his makeshift mailbox. He was the last to finish the circuit and take his seat, wondering if his collage was recompense for the china cup she had given him.

  After the card exchange was over and the children counted out their love notes, Mrs. Patterson passed around a box of sugar hearts with red messages embossed on pastel surfaces: Be Mine, 4ever, Hi Cutie, How's Tricks? The candy tasted like sweet chalk. Thus content, the students could be drawn back into their lessons. She tapped them into submission with a wooden pointer. “Who's ready with their report?”

  A groan, the shuffling to order, papers out upon the desk. In honor of the holiday, they had been assigned to write an essay, to be read aloud in class, on any aspect of Valentine's Day. Four or five eager hands rose in the hot, dry air, and Mrs. Patterson chose Norah Quinn. Wrapped in Erica's old Peruvian poncho, she clutched her pages and advanced to the front of the room, pivoting at the teacher's desk to face her classmates and read:

  “Who was Valentine? How have we come to make this day a celebration of love? Why all these hearts and cupids?

  “The past is no more certain than the future. Little is known about the real Valentine, only this. There may have been two. Both were martyrs who died for what they believed. Both lived and died long ago. The first Valentine was a priest in the Roman times when the emperor outlawed marriage for young soldiers. This was done so that they would be more devoted to fighting than to their sweethearts
. But Valentine felt sorry for those men and married them in secret. When the emperor found out, he had Valentine killed! Off with his head, chop. Sometimes love means sacrifice.

  “The second Valentine was just a man who had been falsely imprisoned. He fell in love with the jailer's daughter and had to smuggle love letters in secret. He signed them from ‘Your Valentine.’ These two stories are legends, and not much is known about Saint Valentine.

  “The day of February fourteenth is related to love and fertility rites of the pagans. The pagans were people who believed in more than one god or sometimes none at all. This love and fertility rite is the time of the marriage of Zeus and Hera. The Romans thought they were gods, but they were wrong. It is also the the feast of Lupercalia, when the boys of Rome ran naked—am I allowed to say that?—naked in the streets, striking women with a leather strap. This custom was continued by the Christians. In the Middle Ages, during the coldest part of long winters, it became a day when men and women sent each other notes of their true love. These were the very first valentines. Though boys no longer ran naked in the streets hitting ladies with straps.

  “It is a day to look forward to the end of winter and death and to celebrate a new beginning. The Middle Ages poet Chaucer said, ‘For this was on Saint Valentine's Day, when every bird comes to choose his mate.’”

  From his seat, Sean Fallon blushed as the class politely clapped at the end of her presentation. Stunned again by the girl, Mrs. Patterson applauded too, then said, “That was just lovely, Norah, but what about the cupids? You mentioned in the beginning you were going to talk about the cupids.”

  Norah pulled at the fringe of her poncho with nervous fingers.

  “You know,” said Mrs. Patterson, “the little angels with the bow and arrows? Shot through the heart with love.”

  Sean watched Norah closely, fearing she might stop time or turn her eyes a fiery red.

  “There are no cupids, Mrs. Patterson,” she said. “They're just made up.”

  The teacher's laugh was pitched between amusement and derision. “Surely you don't believe that. No naked cherubs with the power to make you fall in love?”

  Working her fingers along the hem, Norah blanched when the first chuckles emanated from the seats nearest the window, rolling across the room in contagion, a wave that would bounce and echo back if she let it reach the far wall. She straightened and squared her shoulders, fingers flying madly through the fringe. Her voice deepened, and she spoke stone-faced. “I would not joke about things invisible to see, for while there are no cupids, angels walk among you.”

  The laughter stopped, threatened to rise again if she paused.

  “I am an angel,” she said, “come to tell you the time is at hand. I am a messenger. Beware the others—the angels of destruction—who walk and watch among you. The seven who serve the terrible will of the Lord to punish the faithless. The Malake Habbalah: Kushiel, rigid one of God; Lahatiel, flaming one of God; Shoftiel, judge of God; Makatiel, plague of God; Hutriel, rod of God; Puriel, fire of God; and Rogziel, wrath of God. Besides these named, their number is legion. Four and forty thousand to come to dwell among you, wreaking judgment.”

  The children's faces had turned to ash.

  “But the Lord is merciful and full of forgiveness. He has sent his messengers ahead to beg your faith and trust. You will know us by the light of the heavens in our eyes.”

  She took off her glasses and opened wide her eyes. All of the children leaned forward in an attempt to see what constellations might be swirling in her irises. Sean was startled by how small her eyes appeared, how she seemed reduced, more vulnerable, a mere child like the rest. He prayed for her to stop. Norah spread the wings of the poncho and said again, “I am an angel of the Lord.”

  Shouts of “Norah, stop” from Mrs. Patterson went unheard, the hosanna made of her name until it became a remonstrance, and she did not notice the scrape of the teacher's chair against the floor, nor the footsteps as she approached, calling her name, insisting, begging her to “please just stop.” Norah did not quit until the woman's hand clasped her shoulder, and glowing, she was led back to her desk, past her stunned and silenced classmates, until seated, she slumped back in the chair. She shuddered and her limbs convulsed as though a shock ran through her nervous system, and then at once, the strange trance ended. Within seconds, her eyes were closed, and exhausted, she slept until the lunch bell rang. As the other students filed off to their meal, Mrs. Patterson asked Norah to stay behind.

  “What on earth came over you?”

  Norah folded her hands, offered no explanation, prepared herself for punishment.

  Mrs. Patterson softened, thought of the girl as hers for the moment. “Are you all right, child?” Receiving no answer, she said, “I can't have such episodes in my classroom. I will have to tell your grandmother about your disruption today, and the principal as well. We just can't have it.”

  Norah paid no heed to the threats of discovery, and in fact seemed pleased that the news would soon reach her home and spread like fire through the town. The plan to save Mrs. Quinn had been put in motion. Norah strolled to the cafeteria like an empress, and the children stopped to whisper as she passed, the rumors of her brazenness trailing her like threads loosed from a caftan. The others were waiting for her at the dining table, suddenly the center of the room, beaming with joy. Only Sean seemed troubled by her confession, but he kept his fears to himself. After the celebratory meal, her classmates queued to escort her back to class, and later to walk home with her, just to be close to the light they had newly discovered.

  BEFORE THE CHILDREN were due home, the phone rang. Had not Diane been trying to nap in the upstairs bedroom, Margaret would have let it go. But she picked up the receiver, and at the sound of Principal Taylor's voice, Margaret drifted into true fear. He spoke of episodes and disruptions, counselors and psychologists. During their conversation, she thought immediately of the other two times panic had gripped her so. The first was when they told her about the explosion and she finally understood that Erica was gone. The most recent had been about Paul, not the day her husband finally died, that was more relief buoyed by a sloughing sorrow, but the moment of his diagnosis; the two of them faced the doctor confirming what Paul had long suspected. She shuddered at the finality of the news, the shockingly few days left in the game, and the paucity of remedies. There would be none. He had been through it with her the first time such dread arrived. But now there was no one to help her. Diane would be heading back to Washington, and Margaret would have to face the coming danger all alone. She prayed again for some help.

  “There is something wrong with your granddaughter,” the principal said. “She stood in front of the class and announced she was an angel of the Lord, and threatened that there would be fire and plagues and forty thousand more angels. She frightened the other children, not to mention poor Mrs. Patterson. I'm not even sure this girl is legally registered in my school, Mrs. Quinn, and on top of that, all this trouble today. You need to do something about Norah.”

  The child's claims did not bother her. Children are capable of believing anything and telling the most outrageous lies with unerring confidence. No, her fear was where such a story would lead. Norah had to escape scrutiny and stay out of trouble. If the right people pulled the right thread, their ruse might unravel, and in the end, the girl would be taken away. She hung up the phone and stared out at the blank landscape through a rime of frost etched on the glass.

  A figure materialized out of the whiteness, and in the afternoon light, she first mistook him for a ghost, her husband coming back to her, but as the man approached and came into greater clarity, his features shifted beneath his brimmed hat, and he seemed in his gestures more like her father or what she imagined her father would have looked like had he aged into late life. He moved as if on ice, gliding to her, filling the win-dowpane with his form, the camel hair coat, the jaunty scarf, his face kind and creased, his hair yellow against the snow, blond as the boy she h
ad known and loved long ago, before Paul, and his countenance changed again as fleeting as a thought and he became all that she both desired and dreaded, moving toward her. From afar, she heard his name on her lips voiced across space, penetrating the glass. “Just don't hurt me,” she whispered a prayer, and in reply his voice sounded Norah in her imagination, so she closed her eyes until he was gone. Banished as suddenly as he had been summoned. Margaret collapsed in a chair by the window, staring at the failing light of four o'clock, numbed to the nothing of the world beyond the thin glass panes. She was sitting there still when the door flew open and in slipped a cold breeze, followed shortly by the child. Wordless, Norah came to her in a moment of need and threw her arms around Margaret's shoulders and laid her head upon her breast.

  BOOK II

  October 1975

  1

  Down the highway they flew, bound for destruction. Fearing they would be chased, they charted a southerly route, moving in an unexpected direction, plotting along a crescent line through the Bible Belt, then shooting across the western wasteland to Vegas, and on to rendezvous with the other Angels in Berkeley. When the rising sun broke upon her face, Erica cringed and shielded her eyes. For a moment she did not know where she was, and the landscape racing by the window confused her further until she turned to find Wiley fixed on the road ahead. She remembered having dozed off an hour or so after their escape, and now in the brilliant morning, the night's events came rushing to mind—Wiley in the bedroom, the gun, stealing past her father—and her pulse thumped in her temples. Sunlight streamed through breaks in the treeline, sawn into shafts that pulsed like a strobe.

  “Where are we?” The croak of her voice surprised them both. She cleared her throat and asked again.

  “West Virginia somewheres.” He put on a thick bumpkin accent. “Over the hills and through the woods.”