Angel Heirs

Angel Heirs

by

Mark Cowlin

Published by Mark Cowlin for Smashwords

Copyright 2011 Mark Cowlin

Explore the companion blog to Angel Heirs at

http://www.markcowlin.com

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

For Shannon.

Table of Contents

Now

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Now

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Now

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Now

Chapter Twenty One

Now

From whom the gods wish to preserve,

They first take everything.

Angelina is sitting at her writing desk at home. The printer rolls out its last sheet of paper and Angelina picks it up. Her hand is shaking and she studies it for a moment. It is over, done, finished. This is more work than she ever did at school.

Before her on the desk is her novel, Angel Heirs. She didn't mean to write it in the first place, but she, well, they, had to write out their story to be free of it, to get on with life again, to grow up. Gerald will be excited. She grabs the final chapter of the manuscript and heads downstairs. She knows exactly where he is. It is a beautiful summer day and he will be in the garden, his garden, resting under his tree, his gentle whispering aspen.

A faint breeze under the sunlight reminds he of how summers used to be and maybe, just maybe, will be again. She tells Gerald that everything is as it should be, that the universe is shining its light directly on them. When she is finished reading she closes her eyes and hears Gerald tell her that it is the other way around, that today she is the star shining back at the universe. They both know that her achievement is greater than the completion of her novel. She kisses him goodbye and heads inside. Today is going to be a busy day and she must go alone.

It is early still, and she gets into her little blue car and drives two hours to the city and to an old church, her ruined and broken old church where her new life began. She has not been here in over three years and she is apprehensive. When she arrives she is startled to find that the once derelict and abandoned church, her church, their church, has been remodelled, restored, reinvented: it has been turned into a teahouse for old ladies. This is not what she had expected, not what she needed.

The interior makes her mouth drop - stained glass windows, pristine white walls and tall green plants that give it a light air of the colonial. She recognizes the huge angel that governs the centre of the room, but the broken martyr is gone. She heads for the stairs, once so dangerous that to climb them was indeed climbing the steps to heaven, and is transported to a roof garden over the south transept. Tables are nestled among adjacent shrubs and under small tress and close to water features. He mother would like this, she thinks, which doesn't help. A locked security door blocks her passage to the belfry, up to the high place among the clouds where she gained her wings and mended a broken heart.

She thinks of her novel, for even though her angel tale is presented as a fiction it is a true story. Everything really happened. She stares up at the belfry behind her. Such a long way up there, she thinks to herself. And such a long way down again.

A teenage couple arrives on the patio and distracts Angelina for a moment. They must be skipping school. They take a table across the roof near the edge and pull their chairs close together. Their behaviour is playful; their love is real and deeply touching. But with the speed of young love they are suddenly grave and hold each other’s hands and touch each other’s faces. Angelina cannot help but stare; the couple’s attentiveness, their small touches and silent words are affecting and painful to witness: this is a love that will not ever fully bear its loss; a love that only those who have known great love recognize. Gerald would appreciate this. Angelina smiles and notices that a single tear is falling down her face, inextricably slowly. She wants so much for it to hurry up, but it will not hasten, and she cannot wipe it away. She lets it hang there on her cheek and gives it its own time to fall. She guesses that she was around the same age as the couple when she met Gerald, and this makes Angelina very afraid for them. They are not so unlike her younger self and her movie star companion. So young, so fragile, perhaps as close to losing it all.

A waiter comes out onto the transept and pays no attention to Angelina at first. He casts a glance at the crossed legs of the teenage girl, then to her lover, and attends their table. He frowns and does not even bother to write down their order. Noticing Angelina, and saunters over and asks her for her order. She looks around the patio, over the heads of the young couple to the rooftops around the church, and finally to the impatient waiter.

"Coffee, please. Black, no sugar. And a grapefruit juice."

The waiter raises an eyebrow. "Will that be all? She nods to the waiter who pouts his way back inside.

Angelina suppresses an urge to go across to the young couple to tell them about great love and to warn them about time, about how there is never enough time to love one another sufficiently, let alone fight or argue. But she does not to go to them. The waiter returns with their order before bringing Angelina her coffee and grapefruit juice. He grunts something as he departs.

Angelina knows of time and of great love, even though her great love began on the precipice of great loss. It discovered her loitering on the edge of living where time runs out, tottering on the ledge of the belfry behind her as she prepared to step off, searching the fine detail of the sky for a way back to happiness. Searching for the secret angel door. It was spring then, and the day was much like today: warm and green with puffy fluffy clouds that make you believe that you could actually breathe in the whole world. It was a beautiful day to die.

Based on a true story…

ONE

It was a beautiful day to die.

The decrepit old church stood above the rooftops of the neat houses, its tall belfry yellow in the spring afternoon. Yes, thought Angelina, it was a beautiful day to die. She liked it.

First she had to find that kink in the fabric of the universe that would allow her to ditch this world and find the next; a tear somewhere, or a shimmering, a seam left unstitched that would reveal what she was looking for: the secret angel door. She knew it would be very small which is why she had spent so much time up there searching for it. Her suffering was almost over, and there would be no more sadness.

Angelina did not doubt that she was an angel. Neither did she doubt that once she made it through the secret angel door she would discover an end to this unbearable darkness. But she had been searching for hours, and now it was time. She just had to trust that it was there. So, the girl abandoned by her parents (one way or another) squeezed her eyes closed and inched her toes out over the end of the world. She breathed in and raised one foot off the thin ledge.

It was then that she heard a deep guttural cough that surprised her so much that she almost stumbled over without trying. It was frustrating to be interrupted in the middle of the last thing she was ever going to do, and she tried to return to the matter of her death. But the coughing began again, and so half a step away from her end, she backed down from the brink and crept around the belfry to see who had so rudely interrupted her.

And there he was: standing barefoot with his toes wiggling over that greatest of divides. When he turned to face her Angelina gasped, for there was a man wearing his pain and loss so visibly it was as if his soul had been turned inside out. His clothes were torn and soiled, but although he looked like a vagrant, derelict and half crazy with suffering, it was clear he was not. His clothes were expensive and even in his wild state he retained the air of the privileged. She thought he looked like a pop star dirtied up for a video.

He was not much older than her, perhaps twenty? Boys her own age looked, well, like boys still. When he turned to face her she felt the day change, simmer a little, like the air gained weight. It was one of those moments when people everywhere stopped momentarily what they were doing and looked at one another or at the sky, shrugged, brushed down the goose-bumps, and went back to their task.

The words that sprang into her mind to describe him were contradictory and colored: redgaunt, greypale, bluesickness, yellowanguish. This man looked as if he had been dying forever.

I’m sorry, she said. Would you like me to leave you alone?

They stared at one another for a long time before he indicated that she join him. Angelina stepped tentatively up onto the ledge beside him.

Are you looking at the view? she asked him, feeling suddenly very vulnerable.

He shook his head. No. You? he asked, gently.

No.

The vastness of the sky above the city made Angelina feel small. A family of clouds passed overhead, predators hunting the remaining afternoon light. Angelina spread her arms wide and imagined what it was going to be like to fly.

Nice to meet you, she said.

You too, he replied. He was studying the distance between the sky and the ground below.

We could do it together, if you like, he suggested. We could hold hands.

This struck her as an immensely beautiful thing to say and she surged with happiness at the thought of being able to die with someone as thoughtful as this. She thanked him for his kindness, and said that yes, she would like to hold his hand when they Went.

Don’t take it as anything, he said.

Then what?

It doesn’t matter.

Do you have to do this? asked Angelina.

I broke my heart, he replied. He sounded far away when he spoke, and it made her sad. What brings you here to the end of the world?

She realized that she must drop her guard: what if he had been sent to test her, and this was the final challenge before she would be awarded her angel's wings? She decided to tell him the truth.

I’m going to be an angel, Angelina replied, you know, a proper one. I've been Called.

Something fell from the dismembered roof of the church and scattered a flock of starlings from the shadows. She began to cry. She didn't know why.

The breaking of his heart had hollowed him out and left the rest to rot, like deadwood. But her pain was loud, he could hear it, as if lightening had struck her and she had shattered under the pressure of it, uncoupling her from life. Parents, most likely. They were always there screwing things up in the background even if they weren't the sole cause. Ask him, he knew. He couldn't tell how old she was, the same age, or younger than he was? She had pale skin and her dark hair blew wispy against her shoulders on the breeze. Girls were hard to work out, which could be a problem - ask him, he knew about that too.

Ironically, for someone in his line of work, he did not pay enough attention to other people to be good at things like that. I’m going to be an angel she had said, so earnest, so unequivocally sure of herself. Her certainty made him uneasy, and he realized that she was probably genuinely crazy. Just his luck to be ambushed by a lunatic at the most important moment of his life, he thought. It proved beyond doubt that his bad luck had not abandoned him. Indeed it intended to see him through to the very end.

He laughed. You’ve come to the right place.

He was cold and mean and wanted her to know that it. He never loved anyone properly, except perhaps his mother and sister, but they had rejected it and he had retreated from them. He sighed the thoughts away and looked at her, this angel of sadness on the belfry.

She was capable of love and loving, he could see that. She was one of those types. No doubt that was what had driven her up here. Love doesn’t break the heart, it breaks the mind, and she had clearly lost her mind. She would be missed by someone close, unlike him, the great icon who would be missed by millions who had never met him, but by no one who had. He told her this, but she was not listening properly and thought he was talking gibberish. He stunk of alcohol and she thought that he was just drunk and delusional; it did not occur to him at all that she did not know who he was.

Angelina thought about leaving, but then she would have to find another place to jump, and at that moment she was too angry to go and search for one. She had found this old church by accident and it seemed like the perfect place to die, or more accurately to be confirmed as an angel, until this man had appeared to interrupt her dying.

Suddenly, he became short of breath and wilted under the weight of staying alive. She tried at first to ignore him but a person cannot ignore their nature, so she reached out for him and led him down from the brink.

It’s okay, he said, not much strength left. It comes and goes.

Together they sat with their backs against the belfry. He looked at her face and the long stalks of tearwash standing tall across her cheeks, and wished that she had not come to this belfry on this day: death would have been easier without her. When finally his breathing eased he dug into his trouser pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. He smiled at her reaction.

They’re not going to kill me now. He offered the packet to her.

He was faintly familiar to her now, or at least he had one of those universal faces; but he was in distress, desperate, she thought. Snowgray, and as cold.

She blindly took a cigarette and allowed him to light it for her. She choked on it and threw it over the edge, slumping into a gloomy and helpless mood. He could see he had upset her, but he didn’t care. If people wanted to get upset, that was their business. He would not allow anything to concern him in his remaining moments alive.

He drew hard on his cigarette, held it deep, and exhaled the smoke down through his nose. He would miss the velvety burn of smoke passing through him and was glad that he wouldn’t have to give it up. Not that it mattered. The benefit of hindsight bestowed upon him at the end of his life had revealed the dispiriting realization that life was a magnificent mirage, and if not a waste of time, then an arbitrary journey through the incomprehensible and downright weird.

They sat again in silence for a long time. The sun fell behind the high buildings and unleashed shadows that leapt across the citytop. Angelina picked up a piece of broken masonry and chalked an angel onto the belfry tower.

That you? he asked.

Yup, she replied.

What do you do when you’re not being an angel in training, or is that full time?

She threw the stone at him. It was a hopelessly poor shot and the stone fell through the transept roof, into the cruel darkness. He yelled at her and the few pigeons cooped around the bell-less belfry scattered close over their heads, forcing them to duck.

I think, he said, trying to be funny, that they should put springboards on the top of buildings like this so suicides have an opportunity to go out in style. Back flip, pirouette, full star. People could give us marks out of ten. Here lies so and so. Wife, mother, friend. An admirable nine-point-five.

Angelina didn't laugh.

She hated the word suicide. It was such a damning, unforgiving word: the soo is sharp and critical, accusing, and points directly at you; the ih in the middle syllable is dismissive, disgusting; the judgmental cide ends in the condemnation of that d, compassionless. No, she thought as she studied him out of the corner of her eye, not funny. The events of the last thirty-six hours had swept her up in a vortex of detached but astonishingly lucid reasoning and action and she now possessed the strength of conviction that had made everything seem inevitable and unequivocally right. But with this strange man she felt uncertainty. She wondered now if she could do it with him watching. It was after all a private event, not a spectator sport for voyeurs of failure and gore. He looked up and caught her watching him, but she hid her embarrassment by poking fun at his appearance.

He was a vain man, one used to looking good and being told that he looked good. But the sun had set for the very last time and the encrusted remains of a night of self-pity hung on him like a tea stain. He looked himself over, but he no longer cared about anything and merely shrugged at his filth.

Whatever, he said, I was drunk when I got here.

He told her the story of his broken heart and how upon hearing the news he had meandered across the city, bumping into walls and cars, pillars and bars, ghosts and posts, until he stumbled across the road and fell through the door of this abandoned church. When he finished he flicked the glowing butt of a cigarette over the edge and watched it vanish into the darkening abyss beneath the ledge. Eventually the fading day soothed Angelina and she wondered what must have driven him to this place. Perhaps he had people looking for him now. He probably had a family, brothers and sisters, or cousins that he was about to tear asunder, a family that would never, ever, understand him quite enough to forgive him for what he was about to do.

This image of family reminded her of her own mother and it made her head spin. She hung her head and waited for the crashing noises, the turmoil, to subside. When she looked up he was staring at her.