Falling (The Falling Angels Saga) (22 page)

Click click click click

I recognized the little contraption on the desk containing five steel balls, each hanging in line on a single cord. When one ball was swayed, it crashed into the second ball, and then the first ball came to a dead stop. The trick of the thing was, when the ball came crashing in, none of the steel balls moved but the last one on the opposite end. This ball went up a few inches before gravity pulled it back into the ball to its left, starting the cycle anew. It was a neat trick.

I’d seen the contraption in the past in novelty stores and on the desk of our eighth-grade science teacher.

Click click click click

Matt was toying with the contraption on the desk. “Mr. Kaplan had one of those. Remember?” I asked.

Science had been my favorite subject in the eighth grade. It didn’t hurt any that Mr. Kaplan was super cute, with an olive complexion and a sexy five o’clock shadow. I always stopped by his desk when I arrived in class to chat about science, but mostly to ask him questions about his personal life.

“Are you married?”

“What does that have to do with science, Ms. Barnett?”

“Plenty,” I’d respond with a dreamy look in my eye.

Each day while I chatted with him, I’d absently toy with the contraption on his desk.

“That’s known as an executive ball clicker,” he said one day. “At least that’s what they call them at stores like Brookstone and The Sharper Image. But it’s really a Newton’s Cradle, named for its inventor, Sir Isaac Newton, the man who explained gravity.”

Mr. Kaplan was not only handsome and a good teacher, but also he added fuel to my trivia fire. What a man.

When I asked Matt if he’d remembered the Newton’s Cradle on Mr. Kaplan’s desk, an odd shadow cast across his face but was quickly gone. Matt wasn’t a big science fan, and I’m sure he’d never visited Mr. Kaplan’s desk without being summoned.

“Yes,” he responded.

Memories of the eighth grade came flooding in. Matt, Erin, and I were thick as thieves at a jewelry convention back then. Along with the memories came the guilt.
My fault.

“You can’t be here!” I repeated with more emphasis.

He looked into my eyes and chuckled.

Click click click click

“Why not? Don’t you want to be with me?” he asked with an amused expression and a raised eyebrow.

“What? Matt, I—” There was something off about his smile. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it was an odd smile to see on Matt’s lips.

“I’ll make you soooo happy,” he said. The smile on his face morphed into a grin. And then he burst into laughter.
Hahahahahaaaaa!
I took a step back.

“You!” I said.

He nodded. “Yeah. You shoulda… seen the… look on your… f-f-face,” he stammered through rolling, uncontrollable laughter. He held his sides and doubled over with it. Tears streamed from his eyes and down his cheeks. “Gotcha!” he said as he continued laughing uncontrollably.

The laughter did something I needed to happen. It chased away all my fear. It got me back on track.

“Neat trick, Armando,” I snarled.

The rampant fear was replaced by anger. It was the kind of anger I’d been worried about lately—the kind of anger I couldn’t control. But I didn’t care. I was in Satan’s presence. I wanted him to feel my rage.

“I didn’t think it was gonna come off
this
good,” he said, still enjoying his ruse. “This is the kind of fun you can look forward to…” he said, still chortling. “When we’re married,” he added with another raised eyebrow.

A blast of cold air shot through the room. It rippled my hair and scattered papers on the desk into the air. They floated about as if we were in a ticker-tape parade. The blast of cold air knocked the Newton’s Cradle to the floor with a loud bang.

Satan’s laughter stopped abruptly. He looked at me with widening eyes. “
You
did that?”

I nodded. “I hate to disappoint you, but you’re going to have to have all that fun you’re looking forward to without me. I won’t be joining you in hell.” I was smiling now. It was the kind of smile you might see on a shark just before it blindsided a school of helpless fish. I wanted to run over and rip Matt’s sweet face off of him, yet I kept my cool.

Whatever joy was in him departed. He closed his eyes, like a man trying to ward off an annoying headache, and breathed in deeply. When he looked at me again, there was murder in those eyes. It mirrored the murder in mine.

“Don’t look so disappointed,” I said in a smug sing-song. “I’m sure you’ll find—”

“Silence!” he roared in a voice unlike Matt’s. His true voice. “Megan, I have had enough of this insolence. Do not push me.”

“Oh, yeah! Do not push
me!
” I took a step toward him, and another blast of air shot through the room, forcing him backwards.

His eyes widened in surprise and then narrowed to slits. He again took a deep breath. “You told the angel to leave you unguarded because you wanted to talk to me. If this parlor trick is what you came for, you’re wasting my time.”

Fire exploded in my belly. “I will never agree to marry you, Satan. Do you hear me?
Never!
” I narrowed my eyes to match his.

“This… attitude, my dear, is what I admire so much in you. Hellfire.” He was regaining his composure, once again smiling.

“Learn to admire it in someone else,” I replied. I could feel the old fear trying to push its way back into my belly. I wouldn’t allow it. It would be disastrous if Satan saw me falter.

“I’ve looked. But there is no one as formidable as you. I have watched you these last several months—your fight; your fortitude; your will to win.” He said this with a glint of fatherly pride in his eye.

“You and I are the perfect match,” he continued. “Our children will be endowed with my power and
your
will. Such children will expand my rule to include both heaven and earth. That is why I will never let you go. You are the key to expanding my kingdom.”

The flattery came as a surprise, but what was more surprising was that he believed he and I were the coupling that would upset the natural order of things. The thought of it made my skin crawl.

“Never happen,” I said, defiance coming off me like heat off a blast furnace.

“Never say never,” he said in a sing-song, the hint of warning shading his voice. He continued to smile. It was Matt’s smile on Matt’s freckled face and it might have softened me. But there was malice beneath the glassy surface of Matt’s blue eyes, and Matt had never in his lifetime looked so cunning. This wasn’t Matt I was talking to. This was a monster.

*

An organ was playing a somber tune, and I knew I was in church before I opened my eyes. I opened them on the site of hundreds of shell-shocked mourners all dressed in black, jammed into pews like sardines. A familiar knot pulled taught in my stomach.

I glanced from side-to-side. The church and faces around me were unfamiliar. The knot in my belly eased just a little. I didn’t see my grandmother or Mrs. Dawson from next door.
It’s not my mother’s funeral,
I thought.
Thank God it’s not Suze.
This relief was immediately accompanied by a wave of guilt. Someone I knew had died, and I was feeling relieved.

I began scanning the pews searching for a familiar face among the sad-eyed mourners. There were no teenagers so I ruled out Maudrina or a classmate. The knot eased a little more.

I spotted a bleary-eyed man at the end of my row. Monsieur Perez, in a black tweed suit, stared ahead vacantly through swollen eyes.

Aunt Jaz.

The thought hit me like a lightning strike. The knot in my belly once again tightened as my eyes scanned to the front of the church where the casket rested amid a sea of flowers and wreaths. A young woman knelt before the casket wailing uncontrollably, her cries of grief nearly drowning out the organ music. Even with her back to me, I recognized Maudrina, her shoulders hunched and heaving. Two elderly women, her other aunts, were trying to coax her away to no avail.

I jerked to my feet like a zombie, my muscles stiff with remorse. The casket was open, and from where I stood I could see clearly inside. The woman lying within was clad in a forest green dress, something out of the fifties. A vintage white pillbox hat with a tiny green veil lay gracefully atop graying hair done in a fifties style. She was smiling, and I couldn’t help but think of Aunt Jaz’s boisterous laughter and bear hugs that I’d never get to experience again.

“Aunt Jaz,” I called softly as tears began to fall from my eyes. “How?” the word skulked from my lips. I knew it couldn’t be true. Aunt Jaz couldn’t be gone. This had to be a vision sent to me by Satan, and yet the mixed emotions of anger and fear I had been feeling gave way to an emptiness. I was a vessel who would never ever experience the satisfaction of fullness again.

Maudrina, at the front of the church, began wail even louder. “Take me!” she cried, clutching the brass rails alongside the casket. “Take me!”

“It was so sudden,” the woman seated by my side said in a motherly tone. “It was as if the life had been snatched right out of her.”

“It was,” I said knowingly. “And I know why.”

I blinked, and when I opened my eyes again, I was seated in my own dining room. With the sight of the chipped oak dining room table and mismatched chairs, relief began to wash over me. The funeral wasn’t real. I know that’s what I’d believed, but now I was certain of it. It was yet another of Satan’s tricks.

I looked out into the entryway where chief Obi stood. He was no longer there. The relief I’d begun to feel shifted into reverse.
Is this another dream, or worse?
Now that I’d allowed Satan into my dreams, I had to wonder if he’d been up to his old tricks, taking over and keeping me in the dark for days or even weeks.

“Hi.” It was my mother’s voice.

I jerked around. She had come silently into the dining room and was standing in the doorway connecting the dining room to the kitchen. She was wearing frumpy gray sweats I hadn’t seen in two years. Her hair was hidden beneath a kerchief.

“Hey, mom,” I said, adding a little cheer to my voice so as not to reveal the emotional roller coaster I’d been on.

“You have to start packing, sweetheart,” she said. There was a hint of caution in her voice. Or was it sadness?

“Packing? Am I going somewhere?”

She wagged her head at me. “Megan, I don’t have time for this now. You know we have one week to vacate.” It was neither caution nor sadness. She was annoyed.

“Oh, right,” I said, as a hornet’s nest swirled in my stomach.

Vision or reality?
I asked myself.

“At least we’re not going far,” I said, hoping to prompt her to say more.

“Maybe not now. But I’m serious, young lady. When the school year is over you will be joining me at Grandma’s in Florida. And no more trying to talk me out of it.”

Young lady?
That was a scolding term, one she used when she’d had enough of me. There was something wrong with Grandma. Why else would we be moving there? Why else would she be so annoyed with me? She was worried about Grandma.
Vision or reality?
I hoped vision. I prayed vision. I prayed that Satan was trying to send me a message, and not that I’d woken up to discover something was seriously wrong with my grandmother.

Suze plopped down in the chair opposite me. “I don’t want to sound mean, hon,” she said, her voice softening. “This lawsuit’s been hard on all of us.”

Lawsuit?
I quickly began putting two and two together. “We’re losing our house.” It was neither question nor statement. It was both.

“We’re losing our
home
,” she said. “All because of that stupid Kinetoscope. How was I to know it was a fake?” Her eyes filled with tears as she began reliving the horror of the past few… days? Weeks?
Vision or reality?
I recalled her selling the scope for a lot of money.

Vision or horrible reality?

I looked back into the entryway where Chief Obi had once stood. His absence foreshadowed Tony’s absence. The lawsuit, I surmised, had taken a toll on their relationship. If my hunch was right, Tony had bailed on us.

Nightmare vision or earth shattering reality?

“We’re gonna get through this, Mom.” I reached over and patted her hand.

“I know. We always do,” she replied, grasping my hand in hers and smiling through her tears. “It’ll be just like the old days. The two musketeers.”

The doorbell rang. It came right on time because I had to get out of there. The best years of my life had been spent with Suze, just the two of us, the two musketeers. Not long ago I wanted it to go back to being like that again. But not anymore. I couldn’t go back to how things used to be. Things could never be the way they were when I was a little girl. I knew that now. For one thing, I had love in my life—true love, and that changed everything.

“I’ll get it,” I said, jumping to my feet and heading for the door.

“It’s probably the movers. Someone is supposed to come over and give us a quote on the move,” Suze called. I could almost hear her heart breaking as she called to me, over the prospect of leaving our home forever.

I opened the door on a handsome man with sunbaked skin and dirty blond hair. “Hi,” he said in a voice that was a bit too cheery. Khakis and a rumpled work shirt gave him a rugged, outdoorsy look.

“Are you from the movers?” I asked, returning his smile.

“Movers? No. So you’re moving, huh? Guess I got here just in time.”

He wasn’t from the movers. Time to shut down the welcome wagon. I eased the door closed so that I was now talking to him through a space about a foot wide.

“What do you want?” I asked through the space.

“Megan, right?” the man said, still smiling despite the fact I’d practically slammed the door in his face.

“My parents are right in the next room,” I cautioned, easing the door shut a little more. “What do you want?” Any hint of friendliness I had displayed earlier was gone.

“Of course you’re Megan. I’d recognize those eyes anywhere.” He was tall, over six feet. He scooched down a little so I could get a better look at him. “It’s me. Dad.”