Into This River I Drown (29 page)

I pass the Old Yard, those graves time is erasing, the names on the stones all but illegible. These people are forgotten. These people don’t have fresh flowers on the grass, no one who actively mourns them. Their mourners are likely dead themselves by now, on their way to being disremembered. How would it feel to live a full life and have no one remember it, to have no one remember the extraordinary things you accomplished, even if it was just waking up every day and finding the courage to get out of bed?

I see her, then. Even in the dark, even in the distance. She means something different to me now, with her stone wings and outstretched hands. She means so much more. She beckons me without moving, she calls for me without making a sound, even though in my head I can hear the flutter of wings and I see the color blue. I push it away before it can become something more, focusing on the stone angel getting closer. Her face is kind, but also sad, as if she knows what has happened to me, and what she must do. She hasn’t moved since I first laid eyes on her, always watching. Always guarding.

This last thought causes an ache in my chest.

And now, for the first time in weeks, I stand before my father.

Fifteen words:

EDWARD BENJAMIN GREEN

“BIG EDDIE”

BELOVED HUSBAND AND FATHER

MAY 27 1960—MAY 31 2007

“Hey, Dad,” I say softly. “Sorry it’s been awhile.”

When I first started visiting him, I felt foolish talking to him out loud.
He can’t hear you
, I had chided myself.
He’s not really there and you’re just sounding like a nut job.
But I pushed on, and eventually it became easier, and I could even hear what I thought would be his replies, said in that gruff voice of his, buried deep in my mind. These days, there are times that I have to struggle to remember his voice just right. It seems to take longer and longer to find the cadence, to get the timbre just right. But eventually it comes to me and it’s like he never left, and he’s standing next to me, saying all the things I want to hear.

But it feels different tonight. Something feels… closer. Just out of reach.

I scan the rest of the boneyard, but it’s empty, the nearly full moon chasing away some of the shadows attempting to creep in. The hairs stand up on the back of my neck. I tell myself I’m just imagining things, there’s nothing here with me. I turn back to my father, the guardian angel still reaching for me, her palms up. Not able to stop myself, I reach out and touch her palm, the stone cool against my fingers. I raise my eyes to her face, and she’s watching me with gray eyes, her lips slightly parted. For a moment, I think she’ll speak. But, of course, she’s made of stone. She’s not real.

I let out a deep breath. “It’s been kind of crazy these last few weeks. I don’t… I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing here, Dad. I thought I was. I thought… God, I don’t know what I thought. Did you send him here? Calliel? I don’t know why I think that, but there’s a part of me that thinks you did. If you did, then I’m sorry. I’m sorry for messing things up. I’m sorry for making him go away. I’m sorry I couldn’t figure it out in my head. Dad… I’m drowning here, okay?” My voice cracks, but I can’t seem to stop. I have to get this out. “I can’t seem to keep my head above water anymore. Things are just snowballing and I don’t know how to stop it. Five years. Five years I waited for something to happen, and now that it’s all at once, I… I need help, Dad. Please. I need help so bad, and I promise, oh how I
promise
you, that if you send him back, I’ll do everything I can to make it right. I’ll do everything I can to help him like you asked me to. I’ll do it for you. And I’ll do it for him.”

I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. “Fuck, do I miss you. There’s times that I find myself thinking something and I’ll turn around to tell you, and it hits me that you’re gone. It hits me all over again, because I could’ve sworn you were just here. Like you were standing right next to me just a second ago. Why can’t you be? Why did you have to go? Where were you going that day? You lied to me. I know you did. You weren’t going to see any friends. What did you do? What did you see?”

A sob rips my chest and I try to choke it back down. “I’m so angry at you. I’m so fucking mad. You bastard. You fucking asshole. Why’d you have to go? Why did you have to leave me behind? You promised me. You promised me that you’d always be there. I’m your fucking
son,
and you promised me!
You fucking
promised
!”

My eyes are bleary and my knees feel weak. I reach out to steady myself and grab onto the stone angel’s hands. She holds me up as my body trembles. It hurts to stand here. It hurts to be here. Even after all the time that has passed, it still hurts. Everything about this place is—

blue

—pain and I just want it to stop. I just want it to be over. I just want to raise my head up and wake from this nightmare that I can no longer tell is real or not. There has to be an ending. This has to finish before it’s too late.

Footsteps, from behind me.

I whirl around, the angel Calliel’s name dying unspoken on my lips.

Standing ten feet away are the Strange Men.

I take an inadvertent step away, and the angel’s stone hands jab my back. The Strange Men cock their heads at me at the same time, mirror images of each other, light and dark. I don’t know if I should be frightened yet, but I’m well on my way. I try to keep it from my face.

“Hello,” I say evenly.

“Benjamin,” the dark man says. “Benji. Benjamin Green.”

“Out here?” the light man asks, quirking his head at the other. “It seems… unwise.”

“Why are you here?” the dark man asks. “What is it you hope to find?”

My heart is jumping in my chest, and my palms feel clammy. “I was just coming to see my father,” I say.

“Father?” the dark man asks. “Father.”

“Ah, the father,” the light man breathes reverently. “His… name?”

“Green. Edward,” the dark man says, his eyes twitching back and forth rapidly. “Edward Benjamin Green.”

“Transposed,” the light man responds. “One is the other and the other is one. Big Eddie? From the sign?”

“Yes,” the dark man agrees. “The sign.”

“Crossed?”

The dark man’s eyes twitch again. “No,” he says, sounding confused. “He… hasn’t. He’s…. paradox. Contradiction. How…?”

The light-skinned man reaches out a white hand and touches the dark man on his shoulder, a caressing slide of his fingers. “It doesn’t matter. Not now. Later. Now is blue. Now is Calliel.”

The dark man shakes his head quickly, as if trying to clear his thoughts. “Yes. Calliel.”

They look at me again. The angel’s hands are still pressed against my back.

The dark man says. “The angel Calliel. Where is he?”

“I told you,” I say, my voice high-pitched. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

“You’re lying,” the light man says. And then he smiles at me, and it’s such a terrible thing that my stomach twists and my skin crawls. There’s no humanity in it, just a wide grin under the dead, black eyes of a shark. “The scratches? Wings, we should think.”

“What… scratches?” I say faintly.

“The angel?” the dark man asks. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know any angel!”

“Lies,” the light man says.

“Deceit,” the dark man says almost regretfully.

They take a step toward me at the same time, and then another. And then another. “We can make you,” the dark man promises. “We can make you tell us things. So many little things.”

I take a step back and glance down as something falls. A vase. Flowers spilled.

The light man continues to grin at me. “Things… you wouldn’t normally share. Things your heart keeps hidden. It will hurt. The angel. Where is he? The angel Calliel.”

“He has broken law,” the dark man says as they take another step. “He has disrupted order. The design. He is not belief. He has fallen from faith. His job was one single thing, and he broke. He broke from what he was.”

“Make him call out?” the light skin man asks. “I think he will scream and the angel will come. Make him scream? He can… scream.”

I feel like screaming. But I can’t.

They are five feet away. The light man stretches out his arms in front of him, his bone-white fingers waggling at me, like he’s saying
mine, give me mine, mine.

“He’ll come,” the dark man says. “Scratches. On the ceiling. This boy is protected.”

“How—”

I bring my foot up and stomp on the vase. It shatters. The noise causes the Strange Men to take a step back. I reach down quickly and grab a large shard, the end wicked sharp. I point it at the Strange Men. “Come on, then, you assholes,” I snap at them. “You want to fuck with me? You want to fuck with my town? Come on, then!” By the end, I’m shouting.

A flutter of wings from overhead.

“He’s here,” the dark man says as he looks skyward.

“Expected,” the light man says. “Make Benjamin scream? Maybe no time after. He should scream for his lies. He lies.”

A snarl turning into a roar. Then, as if he had fallen again from the sky, Calliel appears in front of me, his dark-blue wings spread wide, thirty feet from tip to tip. The ground around us shakes as he lands between the Strange Men and me, crouching down, his head bowed. He’s still wearing the jeans I’d seen him in last, but they are dirty and torn, revealing swatches of white skin that are almost luminous.

For the first time, a flicker of fear crosses the Strange Men’s faces as they take a step back. Whatever hold they had on me is released, and I fall to my knees behind Cal, almost unable to believe he is here.

“Benji,” he growls without rising, his head still bowed. Nothing in the world has ever sounded better than my name on his lips. “Are you okay?”

I want to tell him yes, I am okay. Now that he is here, I’ll always be okay. And as long as he stays, everything will be wonderful and he’ll never have to ask me that question again. But all I say is, “I think so.”

He nods, the red stubble across his head almost glowing in the moonlight. His wings quiver and I smell earth. The smell is a palpable thing and it catches in my throat. “Stay behind me. Whatever happens, you stay behind me.”

“Cal, I….”

“I know,” his voice is still deep and rough. “There is much I have to tell you. But first….” He rises to his feet, towering far above me. He’s magnificent, stretched so high he looks like he could reach up and touch the sky. His skin appears to be twitching, and he glances back at me just once. His eyes are almost completely black, his jaw set, and I realize he’s
furious
, so much so that he’s
shaking
with it. But even as those eyes fall on me, I understand it’s not at me, none of his fury is directed toward me. His rage is meant for the Strange Men, and it takes my breath away. They’ve come to this place. They’ve threatened his town and threatened
me
. He’s so far in his anger that it’s making him quake. I nod at him, letting him know I understand. I move behind the stone angel, peering out around her wings.

He turns back to the Strange Men.

“Leave,” he says coldly. “You are not welcome here. This is my town. I have not called for your assistance.”

“It appears you misunderstand our intentions,” the dark man says, cocking his head to the right.

“We are not here to assist you,” the light man says, cocking his head to the left.

“Angels do not belong on the earthly plane,” the dark man says, taking a step toward us.

“You have broken angelic law,” the light man says. “You have defied God.”

“Do not presume to know the words of my Father,” Calliel says, his wings shuddering. “Michael does not speak for God, no matter what he says.”

Michael?

“Michael sees all,” the dark man snaps, anger showing on his smooth face for the first time. “He is a vessel, put in place to speak the wisdom of God. He is one of the Firsts. You know this, Calliel. And you know the consequences for disobeying him.”

“Guardians such as yourself are not meant to become corporeal,” the light man says, a sneer on his lips. “You are to assist your charges when the threads dictate.”

“And a thread has arisen,” Cal growls. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end at the fury in his voice. “A thread has arisen for one of my charges. I followed that thread and it led me here. To see you threatening one of my own. So again, I find myself in a position of knowing what my Father has asked of me. You may leave now. Go back to Michael and tell him I still perform my duties as a Guardian. Tell him to come down himself instead of sending his minions.”

The Strange Men look stunned. “You know that that is not possible,” the dark man hisses.

“You know what could happen to him,” the light man barks. “You know what is happening to you even as you stand here.”

“Why you have chosen to take this risk is beyond comprehension,” the dark man says, taking another step forward.

“How you have survived this long is a quandary.” The light man takes a matching step. “Michael will want answers.”

Cal forms his hands into fists at his side. “Last warning, men of nothing. Leave now. Threaten not my charges. I will not ask again.”

“He’s weaker now,” the dark man says, a cold smile on his face. “Even he knows it.”

“Yes,” the light man says. “He is. This will end now as we were instructed. We cannot go back to Michael empty-handed.”

“So be it,” Cal says, bowing his head. “Father, forgive me for what I must do. I pray for you to have faith in me as I do in you. The thread is bright. Benjamin Edward Green is mine, and I will do what I must to protect him.”

I am allowed a moment, an infinitesimal space in time where his words reach me and burn through me like fire. My mind is slowly catching up with my eyes, his sudden appearance after the absence of days that felt like years melting away like a bad memory.
He came for me
, I think, in this moment.

But that is all I am allowed. As soon as the echoes of his words die out, the faces of the Strange Men twist into something clearly not human. They retain their shapes, their colors of light and dark, but it’s the way their mouths open wide, into gaping snarls that confirm they are no more human than Cal is. The roars that pour from their mouths are like a low screech, and they cause my eyes to water. I clap my hands over my ears to try and block the horrible noise. They hurl themselves at Calliel, hands outstretched, their fingers looking impossibly long, stretched out into points, like claws.