Spoiler! :
Jake brings him home. Says, “Mommy, I found an angel”, and you’re not paying attention, so you make a sound like a hum, say “How nice” and when Jake asks “Can he come in?” you nod, “Of course”.
It’s only when you turn around to rid him of his scarf and jacket that you realize there’s something there by his side; hunched-up wings and bright eyes all over, and shaped like a boy as seen through a thick lens through water, standing by your son like it wants to crawl under his skin to see how the world’s like from there. Like it’s terribly cold and only the warmth of a tiny beating heart can make better, like it could at any time take Jake in its arms and fly somewhere far, far away.
You scream, of course you do; and then it’s all instinctive “Get the fuck away from my son” and “I’m calling the police right now” and “Jake come here now!”. And you must look ridiculous like this, with your rumpled clothes and messy hair and tired face, and probably not that much of a threat at all, but it works—the thing there flinches back like you’ve just slapped it, and you’re not even halfway to it yet.
And you can’t get there—because Jake’s in the way, his arms crossed over his chest in that way he has when he’s being stubborn and protective of something. His face is red, and you’re not sure if it’s because of the cold or because he’s angry. “Leave him alone,” Jake says, eyes wary; “It’s okay mom, I promise.”
“It’s okay”, he repeats, and this time he’s not looking at you but turning his head to the side, towards that winged shape that still hovers behind him, trembling feathers and wide, wide eyes.
“It’s not okay”, you tell him, but you’ve stopped moving. They’re so close, and you can see now that if it came to it the thing would get to Jake faster than you yourself would, and you don’t know what would happen then.
You don’t want to try and see.
“What did you do to him?”, you ask the thing, and Jake scowls, mouth opening to say something, when there’s a little sound behind him.
You’ve never heard anything like that before; it’s somewhere between birdsong and the rumble of an avalanche and the ticking of a clock when all is dark. Or at least, that’s how you’ll describe it later, when you have time to think about it; right then all you know is that it’s not human. It’s terrifying.
It also makes colors swim in the spaces between the three of you, in a way that’s not natural at all. It’s like all of a sudden a little hazy cloud of purple’s made its way in your kitchen, fuzzy at the edges and streaked with jagged lines of sick yellow, like a strange curtain fell across the divide.
Inside your head, you’re kind of freaking out.
Meanwhile Jake looks at it, frowns, and taps his foot. Gives you a disapproving look. “You’re scaring him,” he says.
“I scared it?”
“He’s not an it,” Jake protests. “He’s an angel. His name’s Alan.”
Your heart does something funny at that. It’s been years. You thought you were over it by now, but apparently not. “Did you give it that name?”
Jake shakes his head, no. He’s still too close to the thing, and you don't dare move too quick. “Show her, Alan.”
The wings—the biggest pair, that lie high on the thing’s back—winch back, in a hushed rustle of cloth and feathers. Three of those alien eyes glow, though there is no new light that could have come to reflect itself in them.
Somehow, you do not recoil back. Possibly it has to do with the fact that at least now the pair of eyes that had been staring at you from the hollow of that almost-boy’s neck, under the clumsily-made knot of the scarf, has now closed shut.
In front of you purple shifts to a dark, dark green, while the yellow lightens to the shade of sunlight through summer leaves. You stare.
Jake nudges the thing. “Sound, remember? It’s freaky when you do it like this.”
It makes a little trilling noise. It sounds sheepish, if sheepishness could be conveyed through the sounds of wind rushing through grass-whistles and dragonflies in flight, and the strange music of it makes the colors shimmer like sunset on turtle shells.
Your eyes try to make sense of it. Your ears give up the fight, and roll along with it, and after some sensory acrobatics you force yourself not to follow, come up with Alan. Except with a couple more vowels, and some strange tilts to the sounds that you’re pretty sure are impossible to get right with human vocal chords.
“What the hell was that?”
No lie, you’re kind of hoping for “April’s fool” and “oh hey, you’re terribly, terribly drunk right now, so please ignore everything”, or even for someone with a camera to pop out of the living room and shout “GOT YOU”.
“Don’t swear in front of him,” Jake says. And then, like it’s obvious, “It’s just how he speaks.”
Behind him, the thing slowly blinks all of its eyes. It’s got a wing half-open, curving over Jake’s shoulders. The primaries brush against the high collar of his jacket, and hover just a breath away from the wild spikes of his hair.
You don’t know what to do.
“Jake,” you try, very softly, very warily. “We’re going to be late. Can you go up and see if Claire’s ready?”
He looks between you and his angel. “You’ll be nice to him?”
“I promise,” you lie, and he thinks about it before nodding.
“And don’t run up the stairs!” you remind him, automatically, before realizing that now it’s just you in the room with it. It hasn’t moved from where it was standing, just tilted its head in the direction Jake went, half of its eyes following the dull sound of his feet on the floorboards.
The rest of them are on you.
“I don’t know what you are, or what want with my son,” you say, and hope the trembling in your voice isn’t too clear “but I don’t want to see you get near him ever again.”
Around it the air takes on a pale pink shade, like roses that have forgotten what they should look like. It reads a bit like sorry, your eyes tell you, but mostly it reads like sad.
“Get out of my house,” you tell it, and it gives a slow nod, hesitant as though it is the first time it has ever had to make such a gesture.
Then there is a sound of great wings, though the ones it wears like a cloak only tremble and resonate with the sound, otherwise still and shut; then light flashes bright and burning, and when you can see again you are alone in the kitchen.
Jake’d left the door open when he’d come in. It’s closed now.
“Of course it had to be polite about it,” you grumble, and do not let yourself think too much about it.
“Ready to go, kids?” It sounds like a herd of elephants up there, so you guess it’s an ‘almost’. You should get changed too. Make a note to remember to buy flowers on the way, and maybe check the locks on the doors when you get back.
Through the glass panes in the door you can see the sky.
Something dark and metallic flies across, a soundless blur that does. You blink. It’s gone.
What the hell?
*
Claire very gently puts the white roses across the worn grey stone, and steps back. The winter sun catches in her hair, and plays over the zipper of Jake’s new jacket.
The headstone reads ALAN BAUER, 1975-2007. That’s it.
Back then he’d said “I don’t want anything else,” and that was the one time you couldn’t refuse him anything (except the sketchbook; it’d gone something like this:
“I’m dying. I want my sketchbook.”
“You’re also blind. No.”
“Beethoven was deaf. Didn't stop him from playing the piano.”
“And your point is?”
“You’re obstructing art itself!” Accusatory finger-pointing. “Barbarian!”
Eyeroll. “No sketchbook for you, Artist McArtsypants, and that’s final.”
“I demand you entertain me. Sing something.”
“Will that shut you up?” Nod. “Fine.”
He’d made a grab for it later, but you’d known to watch out for it. Dumb predictable perfectionist that he was—to let him scribble would be to let him realize completely, fully, that this was it, and you couldn’t let that happen. Not to him.).
But anyway. Alan’d always been a stubborn idiot. Tried to get her to promise to forget him, which is pretty much all there needs to be said on that subject.
Possibly the biannual visits to his grave are partly due to spite.
But mostly?
“I miss you, you idiot.”
Yeah, that. You wave the kids off to play around in the snow after the first couple minutes of fidgeting at your side, with the sole conditions of not stepping on graves and keeping the noise low. You almost envy the lightness of their laughter, the ease with which it rises in-between monuments to the dead.
“Jake brought something back home today. He’s a lot like you, keeps picking up strays. This one says his name’s the same as yours.”
The cold catches the breath out of your mouth. The breeze catches at the rose petals, and they rustle against the stone.
“I don’t know what it was. Jake says it’s an angel, but it had eyes like... like too many spiders, and wings like sparrows and falcons, and when it spoke it made the world change color.”
The stone’s cold. Your fingers might be colder still.
“All I know is—it doesn’t belong here.’
You breathe. Remember pink and summer-bright green, and the protective arch of wings.
“I’m afraid it’ll want to.”
Your sudden laughter skitters across the frozen puddle on the path, slips and tumbles like a startled animal.
“I’m not sure why I’m not more panicked about it right now. I think it reminds me of you. That’s dumb, isn’t it? I’m not calling the cops about the weird-ass alien thing that came home with my son, not because I’m worried they’ll think I’m crazy but because said weird-ass alien thing reminds me of my dead big brother.”
If you close your eyes you think you could almost see him, even after all this time. Leaning against the cypress that stands just by his grave, his hands in his pockets and his head tilted back, his eyes raised. Looking at you sideways, and smiling a crooked smile.
He still looks as young as he did before he died.
The wings are new though.
“Huh. Either you really are trying to tell me something, or I’ve gone completely mad.”
You’d like to think you’re still holding on to your sanity. Even if you’re apparently relying on a delusion your stupid sentimental mind came up with to make you feel better about not being freaked out enough. That leaves the first option. You’ve never been superstitious, but this is Alan, and he’d lived for that sort of things.
“Think I should give it a chance?”
Wait and see, whispers an echo of his voice (first one to say auditory hallucination gets thwacked, thank you very much) through the leaves, and then he leaves you alone. Again.
“Typical”, you smile, and pat the stone. Turn, and walk away to find the children.
They’re not far away. There’s a wide open space by the edge of the cemetery, unpunctuated by markers and crosses, and the kids are lying there, smiling through their scarves. They’re making snow angels.
It figures.
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