by Abby Knox
She drove farther on and saw the art deco movie house advertising screenings of that one mediocre monster movie in which Hollywood had attempted to tell the story of Eden, based loosely on the mysterious drownings and strange creature sightings.
Ada cranked a hard right turn at the main intersection and made her way toward the elementary school, the location where the panel discussions were to be held. In place of school announcements, the marquee listed the schedule of speakers for today. A round table discussion on Mothman was slated for ten a.m.. The historical society would give a walking tour of local haunted houses at one p.m. An open mic session for people to share Bigfoot sightings was set for three p.m. In five minutes, the panel discussion on The Mysterious Bell Mountain Giant was set to begin. The latter was the entire reason why Ada had been brought here, though she could have given talks on at least one or two other subjects on the agenda.
Oddly, the Bell Mountain Giant was one of the only cryptids she had not yet investigated personally. But Ada had done her homework, and as it turned out, the whole area was riddled with sightings of UFOs, mysterious creatures, and geological anomalies. She was excited to get lost in the discovery of new-to-her mythology, and first-hand accounts were Ada’s catnip.
Slowing to a stop in front of the school, Ada flagged down a volunteer in a neon green vest who smiled at her as she rolled down the window.
“Parking here is full.”
Ada returned his congenial smile. “I’m one of the speakers here today.”
“Hang on,” he said, pausing to speak into a two-way radio attached to his vest. She listened to the static that came over.
That’s weird.
Something about the static unsettled Ada.
It’s probably nothing.
Pretty soon, another volunteer jogged over, out of breath. “I’m sorry, Beau, the walkies are on the fritz and I couldn’t hear everything you said.”
The woman turned to Ada and held out her hand, introducing herself as Emmeline, the organizer of the panel discussions. “You’re Ada Blair! I wanted to meet you in person. We’ve got reserved parking for you and all the other panelists. Hang on, I’ll let the crew know you’re here.”
The volunteer named Beau fiddled with his walkie-talkie for a moment more but continued having trouble connecting with someone on the channel. “This daggum thing,” he muttered.
Emmeline tried her radio but again, more static.
Ada knew then her ears were not playing tricks on her. They were experiencing a special kind of interference that she had heard before. Not the kind of interruption one gets from a hacker with a similar communication device. She’d heard the familiar vibrating coming from baby monitors in haunted houses, and on CB radios of truckers who had reported strange orbs in the air. It was the familiar sound of non-human mischief, the sound of supernatural beings fucking around with radio waves.
She heard what Emmeline and Beau had not heard because they were not listening for it.
The staticky voice in the vibrating waves of sound whispered, “Go away.”
The glitch was barely half a second long.
“Aw shit,” she muttered under her breath. “Please. Not today, Satan.”
Chapter Two
Samuel
After days of nonstop reading, the giant’s eyes finally landed on something new.
A name. It emerged onto the page with no connection to anything else.
The skin of the giant’s fingertips was dry and cracked from all the searching and re-reading that had turned up nothing to explain what he was feeling. His research had revealed no clues to explain why he was feeling this nudge, a sort of mystical pull toward something, or someone.
The feeling wasn’t the usual sort of biological need below his belly, the kind of urge that his brothers easily satisfied with a trip into the woods to attract adventure seekers who had the taste for an authentic encounter with the supernatural. This gut-level need hit the giant differently. This was the sudden presence of a human, invading his thoughts. Humans can’t do that, though, he’d told himself again and again throughout his reading and researching. Still, a specific human tugged him, teased him, from somewhere out there, and he didn’t know why. It was a nagging, dark urge and felt like a perversion. It was, in a way. The Nephilim had no reason to form attachments to humans; their brutally short life spans only led to heartbreak and misery.
However, as soon as Samuel saw the name flicker and slowly make itself permanent on a blank section of the scrolls, he knew it was the source of his mental disruption. He knew nothing about her other than what she did for a living. The giants—the record keepers of all the hidden creatures and unexplained phenomena on earth—also kept a record of all paranormal investigators. She was one of the few legitimate ones.
It was only a name, yet it brought a curse to his lips. Somehow she was going to mess up everything, and he knew it was partially his fault.
Ada Marie Blair.
Christ on a cracker.
“Go away,” he seethed.
“I will not,” replied a teasing voice of someone who had no doubt overheard him upon entering the library.
Startled, Samuel looked up and nodded to the other giant who had entered the room. “Dev, you scared the shit out of me.”
The second giant didn’t acknowledge the comment; he was on a mission. “Are you coming down to the festival with us to scope out honeys or not?”
The first giant felt torn and tortured, a usual state of being for him. He didn’t meet his brother Dev’s gaze but said he didn’t know if he was going or not.
Dev replied, “The fuck is going on with you lately? You’ve been moping around the place for weeks. I miss Samuel the wingman. Instead, we’re stuck here in this crypt with Samuel the scroll-worm. You do know none of what is written in there has changed in more than ten thousand years, right? Like, how many times can you read through that?”
All of what his brother said was true, though, except for the part about this house being a crypt. Samuel’s eyes were drawn upward by the library’s pointed arched windows of stained glass, and farther up the wall to the curved stone ceiling. Samuel’s face gave his brother a look of dumbfounded annoyance. “Nothing is going on with me.”
“You hit the nail on the head,” Dev said. “How long has it been since you cloaked yourself, went into town or the woods, and got your rocks off? The Summer Bacchanal is coming up and you are not going to be the third wheel again, with no companion. Or, the seventh wheel, I guess.” The giant counted out on his fingers as if he didn’t know how many people he’d been living with for eons.
Samuel shook his head and kept staring at the name on the scroll in front of him. “Check your math, brother. There are seven of us. If six of us have dates and I don’t, that means I’m the thirteenth wheel.”
Dev scoffed at his brother’s pedantry as he began pacing the room. “Maybe it’s this town. Maybe our quiet, sensitive brother Samuel has already secretly hooked up with every available human in this entire sleepy river valley. Maybe you need a vacation. I hear the babes in Washington state have a real thing for shy, tall, hairy dudes in the woods. Wanna take a trip?”
Samuel eyed his chattier brother, knowing Dev wasn’t going to chill anytime soon.
“No,” Samuel said. “Too many television cameras up that way.”
“Yeah, I know, that’s what I mean. We can’t let our west coast half-angels have all the fun. We go up there, we cloak ourselves as Sasquatches, sneak around the woods, do a couple of jump scares, and give the gullible humans a story to tell at parties.” Dev knew how to campaign hard.
“Those guys are asking to get captured, tranquilized, and dissected any minute now,” Samuel replied.
“Europe, then.” Dev went on. “The Black Forest contingent has a beautiful setup. More than a stodgy old abbey like we’ve got here. They’ve got a media room and a gym, everything.”
Samuel smirked. “Sounds like you’re the one who needs a vaca
tion.” His brother’s face had the avid look their kind could get when they were feeling a certain kind of way. Adding in his bald head and tattoos and he looked feral.
Dev snorted. “And miss the Folklore Festival? All the bands of amateur giant hunters, all their cluelessness, all the drugs, booze, and pheromones, not to mention all the neglected girlfriends of convention nerds to lure away into the woods for a little treat…” Dev trailed off and Samuel felt his skin itch at the thought.
Samuel shook his head at his brother. “If it’s a gym and an indoor movie theater you want, you can build those things here. It would only take a few days to combine the elements, or we could do it the hard way and teleport the materials—”
Dev cut him off. “You are missing the point of everything I’m saying.”
Samuel fingered the scroll that lay across the marble tabletop. The middle digit of his left hand had not left the spot where her name had magicked itself into existence before his eyes.
Ada.
Why was she here? Was she the one their Watcher Shemyaza had told him about? To make this eons-long journey easier? But a human could not do that. Humans were a blip. They were fun to play with but lived short lives. What had his father meant by that, then? The Grigori had been full-blooded angels, and as the wisest of all the fallen angels, they had often spoken in riddles.
“You have five other brothers in this house besides me; that should be enough wingmen to help you find what you’re looking for in time for the Bacchanal,” Samuel said.
Dev scoffed, kicking his boot against the decorative base of a stone column separating one floor-to-ceiling case of scrolls from another. “Don’t make me say it.”
“Say what?” Samuel’s voice was full of exaggerated boredom, though he knew what his brother was going to say.
“Seven is the safest number. It’s been that way for millennia.”
“Maybe I’m getting old,” Samuel said on an exhale.
The giants caught each other’s eyes and laughed at the thought. Their noises echoed off the ribbed vaults in the intricately painted ceilings.
“Or maybe I’m winding down. Maybe it’s time to die.”
Dev ceased his laughter at that moment. “The prophecy said the end times would bear itself out with signs and portents. Seven seals would be broken. We half-bloods will be the first to know about that, because our sterile seed will be making babies with the daughters of men, like our dear old dads'. If anything, that’s the opposite of winding down and laying low, my brother. And when that happens, all hell breaks loose.”
Samuel nodded; he knew the prophecy better than Dev did. “Yes, and the archangels will be so busy with the Apocalypse, we giants will crack the code to Heaven’s gate, and reclaim our birthright. Supposedly.”
Dev pounding a rough fist into his palm. “I say fuck the codes. We form an army, rise up and take heaven back in the biggest back-alley brawl the world has ever seen. Or, we die trying. But that’s my way.”
Sam shook his head at his most pugnacious brother. Dev began to eye the scroll that Samuel had his finger on. “Unless the prophecies have a loophole you’re trying to suss out?” Dev queried.
Samuel flicked his wrist and the scroll rolled itself up and found its home inside the cylindrical golden case marked “Lineages.” With another flick, he floated the scroll in its case back to its proper place in the climate-controlled archival system.
Dev looked around at the scroll cases and idly dragged a finger over the labels. “Loopholes are not what the scrolls are for,” Samuel corrected.
Dev harrumphed and disinterestedly kicked the base of one of the room’s many stone archways again. To both of the creatures’ astonishment, a piece of stone crumbled away.
Not completely. But a small sliver of the ancient material cracked and came loose, falling like dust to the floor.
Samuel sat up straight. Dev’s eyes went wide as he held his brother’s gaze for a moment. Both of them had the same fleeting thought.
“And their hidden temples will fall, revealing the giants in the time of the final battle, and all will choose sides.” He had read it a thousand times. It was told in the scroll marked “End of Days.”
“It’s not that,” both Samuel and Dev blurted out at the same time, knowing exactly what the other was thinking. “Jinx!” They both laughed nervously, and each joked about the other one owing the other an extra bottle of wine at the Bacchanal.
Samuel, suddenly feeling the possibility of his mortality, made his decision. He stood up, his eyes ablaze, and relaxed his shoulder muscles. Dev already saw what was coming next, and his lip curled in mischief.
“All right. I’m done studying. Let’s go do our thing, brother,” Samuel said.
Dev let out a wild yawp and threw up his hands in excitement. Both giants’ set of ten-foot wings released themselves in a shimmering display. The feathers unfurled, absorbing and reflecting the multicolored light streaming in through the windows. Samuel felt instantly relaxed and less like the brooding, tortured soul his brothers liked to tease.
Their celebratory noises summoned five more giants into the library in a flurry of feathers and heavily stomping feet.
“Are we ready to get out of here yet? I can’t stand another second of Yael puttering around with the acoustics in this stone prison.” A disgruntled giant wearing an ancient Roman-style tunic ran his wide fingers through his close-cropped hair, complaining about the golden-haired giant who trailed behind him, looking sullen.
“If you would stop stomping around the place with your Sasquatch feet, it wouldn’t mess up the acoustics in the first place, Atlas,” said Yael of the golden hair.
One of the giants, with shining white hair, came around the corner, an excited gleam in his eye. He wore a fitted t-shirt emblazoned with a large footprint with a white question mark superimposed over it.
“What is that monstrosity you’re wearing, Reus?” asked the giant with red hair.
“Official festival wear!” Reus said with the energy of a human child ready to jump into a pool on a hot summer day. “I even cut holes into the back to fit my wings, look!” The white-haired giant spun around to show off the unfurling of his wings through the specially finished holes at his shoulder blades. The holes were not perfectly matched up, however, and the sprouting wings ended up tearing his t-shirt to shreds. “Aww, man! I worked so hard on that!”
“You’re exhausting,” said the serious redhead.
“And you’re loads of fun, Urek. I’m only trying to get into the spirit of things,” shot back Reus.
A rush of wind announced the approach of the seventh—and the largest—of the giants. He floated into the room with the most ferocious facial structure and did not bother letting his feet touch the floor, unlike his brothers.
“Zave!” Dev shouted. “It’s about time, Captain. We almost left without you.”
Samuel snorted at the word “captain.” Theirs was a found family of equals, even though Zave, with his wild hair and glowing red eyes and towering stature, liked to pretend he was the dad of the group. Zave replied in a voice that made all the smaller giants tremble on the inside.
“I doubt you would. Everyone here knows you’re superstitious about the number seven.”
Samuel scoffed at Dev. “And let’s not get into the titles and ranks and the like. I know he likes it, but we’re no angels, especially not today,” Samuel reminded him.
Zave cast Samuel a warning look but did not reply to the “ranks” comment. “Angels don’t get to have as much fun. Let’s fly, brothers.”
No one, not a single celestial giant left on the planet, could resist the invitation to take to the skies.
Yael did the honors; he had the most beautiful voice of all of them.
As the remaining sets of wings unfolded, Yael craned his neck back at an impossible angle and sang in the special language known only to creatures with angelic blood, his golden hair cascading down his back. The sound waves enveloped the whole of the la
rge library, the echoes vibrating the windows and doors.
Samuel smiled. Yael's angelic pipes never failed to impress him.
In response to the vibrations, the high arched ceiling of the library opened like a sliding door and revealed wisps of high clouds on a canvas of clear blue. Seven sets of large feet pushed off from the stone floor. With the ancient tones magically clearing a path to the sky and cloaking them from the spying eyes of humans below, they flew.
Samuel soared through the treetops with his six brothers, the wind whipping through his long, wild hair. The sensation of freedom and altitude always conjured up some vestigial memories. He knew his father had been able to fly up through the atmosphere. Samuel felt it in his DNA, his cells and his blood remembered flying high enough to reach heaven.
He and his brothers and sisters all over the world maintained the ability to fly. They could soar over mountaintops, get swept up in the currents, swoop over breaching humpback whales in the middle of the ocean, bask in all of the beauty of the earth any day that he wished. But they could never fly to the stars. He could not touch other planets, and he could never fly to his ancestral home in the heavens.
The Authorities had seen to that.
Approaching the town in the river valley at the foot of their mountain, Samuel spotted the leering replica of a giant. Every year the festival became weirder and weirder. Every year the idea of a giant in the woods became more and more sensationalized. The brothers approached Riverfront Park and parted ways, all looking for something different. Samuel did not dare to consider what adventures the others would get up to.
Remaining cloaked on his descent, Samuel scanned the crowds below. Hundreds, thousands of people roamed the streets, some of them dressed as Bigfoot. A couple of men dressed as the brothers from the fictional show about demon hunters were entertaining a group of women, who were giggling but so bored he could smell it. Boredom smelled a little bit like vanilla. A little farther down Main Street, he saw a Mothman eating mac & cheese on a stick.