The Wrath of Angels

  The boy returned to the room. Marielle saw that he had trailed a line of bloody footprints across the carpet. He was carrying a backpack illustrated with figures from one of those Japanese animation movies that everyone else seemed to like but for which she didn’t much care, all big-eyed children and mouths that didn’t match the English dialog. He unzipped the pack and drew from it a pair of pliers, a heavy boxcutter, and three pocket knives of varying lengths. He laid the tools out neatly on the dining room table, then pulled up a chair and sat, his feet dangling a good six inches above the floor.

  ‘Now, Marielle, why don’t you begin with the first time you heard your father mention that airplane.’

  Marielle told the story, then told it again. Midway between the two tellings, Darina injected her a second time, and her mind grew foggier. She had trouble keeping details straight in her head, and at one point she must have said something wrong, or contradicted herself, because Grady screamed and when she got him in focus she saw that the bottom of his face was bloody and she realized that the boy had sliced off the tip of Grady’s nose. She started to cry, but Darina slapped her hard, which made her stop. She was careful after that to tell the truth, because what did it matter? It was only a plane. Her father was dead. Paul Scollay was dead, and his brother Ernie too. Teddy Gattle was gone. Only she and Grady remained.

  ‘Who else have you told?’ asked Darina.

  ‘Nobody.’

  ‘The old man,’ said Darina. ‘Who was he? What was he doing here?’

  ‘Paul Scollay’s brother. He knew already. Paul told him.’

  ‘Who else did you tell?’

  ‘No one.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘No one,’ she repeated, ‘I told no one.’

  Her mind was clearing – not much, but just enough. She wanted to live. She wanted Grady to live. But if they didn’t, if the woman was lying, then she wanted revenge: for her, for her brother, for Ernie and Teddy, for everyone this woman and that terrible child had ever hurt. The detective would find them. He would find them, and he would punish them.

  ‘Nobody,’ she repeated. ‘I swear it.’

  Grady screamed again, but she closed her eyes and her ears to it.

  I’m sorry, she thought, but you shouldn’t have told. You just shouldn’t have told.

  Deep darkness without, and darkness within, illuminated only by a lamp on the small table beneath the mirror.

  Grady was moaning softly. The boy had sliced vertically through his lips with the boxcutter blade, but they had stopped bleeding, at least for as long as Grady could keep from moving his mouth. They were still alive, though, and Darina Flores had eventually stopped her questions. They had ceased when Marielle had come up with one detail, one small half-remembered piece of information from her father’s final days. A fort: her father had mentioned passing a fort as they returned home with the money. She hadn’t told the detective about it because she hadn’t trusted him enough, not then. Now she wished that she’d told him all as she watched Darina use a laptop to check maps and histories in an effort to confirm the truth of what she had just heard.

  Marielle must have slept for a time. She couldn’t remember the main lights in the room being turned off, or a blanket being laid over her to keep her warm. She was having trouble breathing. She tried to alter her position, but it didn’t help. The boy was staring at her. His pale, washed-out features repelled her, his thinning hair and his swollen throat. He looked like an old man shrunk to the size of a child. She’d dreamed of him, she realized, and the memory of it made her feel ashamed. In the dream, the boy had been trying to kiss her. No, it was not quite a kiss: his mouth had fixed upon hers like a lamprey attaching itself to prey, and he had begun sucking, pulling the breath from her lungs, drawing the life from her, but he hadn’t managed to do it because she was still here, still breathing, however poorly.

  Just a dream, but as she thought that she felt the tenderness of her lips, and there was a foul taste in her mouth, as though she had eaten a piece of meat that was past its best.

  The boy smiled at her, and she began to retch drily.

  ‘Get her some water,’ said Darina, but she did not look up from the screen.

  The boy went to the kitchen and came back with a glass of water. She was reluctant to accept it, hated having him anywhere near her, but better some brief proximity to him than to reject the water and keep that taste in her mouth, so she drank, and the water dribbled down her chin and fell coldly upon her chest. At last, when she could drink no more, she pulled her head back. The boy removed the glass from her lips but remained standing over her, watching.

  Marielle’s back ached. She shifted on the couch so that she was sitting upright. A blinking red light caught her eye, hidden before by the table. It was a red number ‘1’ blinking on the telephone answering machine. She remembered the earlier call, and the voice that had sounded so familiar.

  It had been the detective’s voice.

  She turned her head away too quickly. The boy frowned. He looked over his shoulder.

  ‘More water,’ said Marielle. ‘Please.’

  ‘Do as she asks,’ said Darina. ‘Give her more water.’

  But the boy ignored them both. He put the glass on the dining room table and approached the answering machine. He put his head to one side, like an animal faced with an unfamiliar object. One pale finger reached out and hovered uncertainly above the ‘play’ button.

  ‘Please!’ said Marielle again.

  Darina glanced up from her screen.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she said to the boy. ‘This work is important. If she wants more water, then give her more water. Just shut her up!’

  The boy stepped away from the machine. He lowered his hand.

  Marielle sank back against the arm of the sofa. She drew in an inadequate, shuddering breath, and closed her eyes.

  There was a single beep from the other end of the room, and a voice began to speak, deep and male.

  ‘Hi, Marielle, this is Charlie Parker. I just wanted to let you know—’

  The rest of the message was lost in a scream of rage and pain unlike any that Marielle had heard before, made more awful by the fact that it came from a child. The boy screamed a second time. His back arched, his neck straining so far back that it seemed as though his spine must break or the swelling on his throat erupt in a shower of blood and pus. Darina rose to her feet, the laptop falling to the floor, and even over the screaming Marielle could hear the voice of the detective telling her that he was coming up to talk with her, that he just had one or two more questions to ask her and Ernie.

  There was a buzzing in the room. Even Grady, immersed in his own misery, heard it. His head moved, trying to find the source of the sound. The house grew colder, as though someone had opened a door, but the air that came through was not filled with the smell of trees and grass but with smoke.

  An insect flew across Marielle’s line of sight. She shrank away from it instinctively, but it came back, buzzing a foot from her face. Even in the dim light, she could see the wasp’s yellow and black striped body, and the curve of its venomous abdomen. She hated wasps, especially those that lived this late into the year. She drew up her knees to her chest and tried to use her feet to flip the blanket at it, but now there was a second insect, and a third. The room began to fill with them, and even in her fear she could not understand how. There were no nests nearby, and how could so many have survived?

  Still the boy screamed, and suddenly Grady was screaming too, his voice joining with that of the boy, and her brother’s bisected lips burst with the effort, and the sound of pain was added to his fright, for Grady’s had been a cry of fear at first.

  The mirror: the wasps were pouring out of the mirror. It had ceased to be a reflective surface, or so it appeared to Marielle, and had instead been transformed into a framed hole in the wall. The dying wasps, once trapped behind it, were now free.

  But that was a supporting wall. It was so
lid concrete, not hollow, and the mirror was just a mirror. Nothing could pass through it. It was simply glass.

  She felt a wasp land on her cheek and begin crawling toward her eye. She shook her head and blew at it. It buzzed away angrily, then returned. Its stinger brushed her skin, and she prepared for the pain, but it did not come. The wasp departed, and the others went with it, the little swarm returning to the mirror where they buzzed and roiled in a circular motion, forming a cloud that took on the dimensions of a head with two dark waspless holes for eyes, and another larger slit for a mouth, a face of wasps that stared out at them from the mirror, and its rage was the wasps’ rage, and it vented its fury through them.

  The wasp mouth moved, forming words that Marielle could not hear, and the boy’s screams ceased. Darina clasped him to her, the back of his head against her breasts, and he shuddered in her embrace.

  Grady, too, stopped screaming. The only sound in the room was the boy’s sobbing breaths, and the buzzing from the mirror.

  Darina kissed the top of the boy’s head, and laid her cheek on his pale scalp. Her eyes found Marielle staring at her, and Marielle could see that Darina was both smiling and crying.

  ‘He remembers,’ said Darina. ‘He’s back now. He’s mine again. My Brightwell. But you shouldn’t have lied. You shouldn’t have told us lies.’

  The boy stepped away from her. He wiped his eyes, and walked to the mirror. He stood before the face of wasps, and he spoke to it in a language that Marielle did not recognize, and it spoke back to him. He stayed that way until the buzzing stopped, and one by one the wasps began to fall to the floor where they crawled sluggishly for a time before dying, leaving only the boy staring at his own reflection.

  Grady Vetters had curled in upon himself. He was weeping and shaking, and Marielle knew that something had snapped inside him. When she called his name he did not look at her, and his eyes were those of a stranger.

  ‘He has so many forms,’ said Darina to Marielle, ‘so many names.’ She was pointing to the mirror. ‘He Who Waits Behind The Glass, The Upside-Down Man, The God of Wasps . . .’

  The boy found a sheet of paper in his bag. On one side was a drawing of a truck, but the other side was blank. He began to write on it with a crayon. When he was done, he handed the sheet of paper to Darina, and she read what was written there before folding the page and placing it in her pocket. She then spoke one word:

  ‘Parker.’

  The boy advanced on Marielle, and the sense of an old mind trapped in a younger body was stronger than ever. His lamprey mouth opened, and a pale tongue flicked at his lips. Darina laid a hand upon his shoulder, and he stopped, his face inches from Marielle’s.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  The boy looked up at her questioningly. He tried to say something, but the words just came out as a pair of harsh croaks, like the cawings of a young crow.

  ‘We promised,’ said Darina. ‘I promised.’

  The boy stepped away from her. He went to the table and began packing his tools in his child’s bag. It was time to leave.

  Darina stood over Marielle.

  ‘You lied to me,’ she said. ‘You should have told me about the detective. I could declare our bargain void, and kill you for it.’

  Marielle waited. Nothing she could say would make any difference now.

  ‘But perhaps because of your lie something special has been restored to us. Do you know what your detective once did?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He killed the being that you see here.’ She pointed at the boy. ‘He stilled his great spirit for a time.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Marielle.

  ‘No, but Parker will when we confront him. I promised that I would let you and your brother live, and I’ll keep my word. We always keep our word.’

  The boy went searching in his bag again, and came out with his metal case of syringes. He filled one from a small glass bottle of clear liquid that Marielle had not seen before.

  ‘No more, please,’ said Marielle.

  ‘This is different,’ said Darina. ‘But don’t worry: it won’t hurt.’

  Marielle watched as the boy injected Grady for the last time. Her brother did not react to the needle, or to the boy’s presence. His gaze was directed inward, but within seconds his eyes had closed, and his chin fell upon his chest. The boy refilled the syringe from the glass bottle. When he was done, the vessel was empty. He dropped it in his bag, and approached Marielle.

  ‘It’s Actrapid,’ said Darina. ‘Injectable insulin.’

  Marielle made her move. Her knees were still drawn up to her chest, her feet flat on the couch. She launched herself at Darina, but the woman was too fast, and Marielle caught her only a glancing blow before she landed hard on the floor, and then the boy was on top of her, the needle was biting, and the world was filling with shadows.

  ‘You’ll sleep,’ she heard Darina say. ‘You’ll sleep for a very long time.’

  The massive dose flooded Marielle’s system, and her mind began to descend into coma.

  39

  Eldritch woke in a hospital bed and thought, I have dreamed this dream before: a bed; a small, clean room; the pinging of a machine nearby; the sharp chemical odor of antiseptic and, beneath it, all that it was meant to hide; and the clawed fingers pulled at him, trying to keep him forever in the darkness. He lifted his arm and felt a tug as the intravenous drip caught on the sheet. He reached for it, and a hand closed gently but firmly upon his arm.

  ‘No, let me,’ said the voice, and he smelled that familiar scent of fire and nicotine, and he knew that his son had come to him; not the Collector but his son, for the Collector was never so gentle. His voice sounded slightly muffled: Eldritch’s hearing had been damaged in the blast.

  ‘I dreamed,’ said Eldritch. ‘I dreamed that she was gone, and then I dreamed that it was but a dream.’

  His face hurt. He touched his fingers to it and explored the dressings on the worst of his wounds.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said his son. ‘I know what she meant to you.’

  Eldritch looked to his left. They had brought his possessions from the scene: his wallet, his keys, his watch. Little things.

  But the woman was gone.

  ‘What do you remember?’ asked his son.

  ‘The power. We lost power: twice, I think. I went down to the basement, but I could see nothing wrong.’

  ‘And after that?’

  ‘A man. He passed me on the street, and I was concerned, but then he walked on, and I let him go. Seconds before it happened, I thought that he called to me. I think he was trying to warn me of something, but then there was an explosion, and I did not see him again.’

  ‘Do you recall anything about him?’

  ‘He was in his late forties or early fifties, I think. Unshaven, but not bearded. Perhaps six feet tall. Carrying some weight.’

  ‘In which direction did he walk?’

  ‘South.’

  ‘South. On the far side of the street?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you tell the police this?’

  ‘No. I don’t think I have spoken to anyone until now. I held her in my arms, but she was gone, and I don’t remember anything else.’

  ‘The police will want to talk with you. Don’t mention the man to them.’

  ‘No.’

  The son took a cloth and wiped his father’s brow, cooling it while avoiding the wounds.

  ‘How badly am I hurt?’ asked Eldritch.

  ‘Cuts and bruises, for the most part. Some concussion. They want to keep you under observation for a few days, though. They’re concerned.’

  ‘I have trouble hearing. Your voice, my voice, they don’t sound right to me.’

  ‘I’ll tell the doctors.’

  Eldritch twisted on the bed. There was a pain in his groin. He looked beneath the sheet, saw the catheter, and groaned.

  ‘I know,’ said his son.

  ‘It hurts.’

  ‘I’ll t
ell them about that as well.’

  ‘My mouth is dry.’

  His son took a plastic beaker of water from the bedside locker and held his father’s head while he drank. The old man’s skull felt fragile in his hand, like an egg that could be broken with just a tensing of the fingers. It was a miracle that he had survived. Minutes earlier, and he would have been gone too.

  ‘I’ll come back later,’ said the son. ‘Do you need anything?’

  Now it was his father’s hand that gripped his arm, and his upper body rose from the bed. So strong, this old man . . .

  ‘Parker came. Parker came, and she died. She was getting his file, and then she died.’ Eldritch was tiring now, and tears of grief squeezed themselves from the corners of his eyes. ‘He warned me, warned you, to back off. He was afraid of the list. He knew that his name was on it.’

  ‘I had doubts. So did you. The woman, Phipps, she told me something—’

  But his father was no longer listening.

  ‘The list,’ he whispered. ‘The list.’

  ‘I still have it,’ said his son, and in the soft dawn light filtering through the drapes he was altering in spirit and form, and he was both son and other. ‘And I know where I can find the rest of it.’

  ‘Kill them,’ said Eldritch, as he fell back on the bed. ‘Kill them all.’

  He closed his eyes as his son’s transformation was completed, and it was the Collector who left the room.

  Jeff and Rachel came to pick up Sam shortly after nine a.m. She had been with Angel and Louis in the kitchen since before eight, buttering toast and scrambling eggs, and as a result I had to make her change her sweater before her mother saw her and blew a gasket.