Guinea Pig (16 page)

“I can ask, but the truth is we don't know a lot either. Not those sorts of details. We can tell you about the encounters, why they came and what they said. But the nuts and bolts – not so much. A lot of my brethren believe that angels don't have physical forms at all.” And that was something he realised was going to change. The fact that you could get DNA from an angel meant that they actually did have physical bodies didn't it?

“Damn! I was hoping. It would just make it a little easier to have some idea of what's coming.”

“We'll do what we can.”

It was after all the least they could do. Especially when it was their artefact that had been used to cause him this pain. Elijah took a sip of his coffee as he tried to think of what they actually could tell him. He feared it would be little. And there was another problem. Even if he had known what an angel would look like there was no guarantee that William would end up looking like one. After what had been done to him he could look like anything. Reluctantly, after another sip on his coffee he told him that. Honesty was all he had.

“So you don't actually know what an angel looks like and you don't know that I'm going to end up looking like one.”

He didn't sound angry or even surprised Elijah thought. He sounded more tired than anything else. Elijah wondered if that was an emotional reaction to what he'd discovered only a few short hours before, or because of the transformation. William had said the changes were affecting his mind. Maybe they were doing more than just damaging his ability to read and write? Maybe even his ability to feel was being taken from him?

“No. I'm sorry. You are actually as close to an angel as anything I've ever seen.”

“Believe me I'm not. I'm just as normal as anyone else. Or I was.” William laughed bitterly. “I'm no angel.”

In that moment Elijah understood something more of his pain. He understood his fear. He was a man and he’d been happy as such. Happy with his imperfections. But angels weren't men and they had to be perfect. He couldn't be that way. He didn't want to be that way. And he was frightened that the process was going to try and make him like that. Harp playing, messengers of God with no true existence of their own. And maybe Elijah thought, he could help with that at least.

“There are two parts to an angel, just as there are two parts to everyone. Body and soul. What Reginald has done is only of the body. It may affect your brain, but not your soul. Even if he got everything perfectly right and you transformed completely, you would still not be an angel. That requires something more.”

“So he could turn a cat into a dog, but it'd still want to chase mice?”

“More or less.”

William's pithy summary fairly much agreed with his assessment of the situation Elijah thought. But there was no reason to think that things would turn out even that well. There was no reason to assume that the doctor had got everything right. In fact, from the pain and the loss of William's ability to read and write it seemed almost certain that Reginald had got it wrong – horribly wrong. But he didn't say that. The young man could probably work it out for himself. He probably already had. How he was keeping himself from screaming out in fear was what Elijah didn't understand. It spoke to some inner strength. Maybe even to faith as much as he denied it.

“Then is there anything else I or the church can do for you?”

“Actually yes Pastor. One thing. It hasn't come to it yet. I'm still alive and can still talk. But at some stage I don't think I'll be able to. And I'm going to have to put my affairs in order. Mostly that means writing some letters to my family. I don't want them to see me. Not like this. I sent them an email a few days ago, saying that I was moving because my flat was destroyed and that I'd be out of contact for a while. And I bought a digital recorder and some batteries. But I can't seem to figure out what to tell them exactly. Perhaps in a few days you could help me with that.”

“Of course.”

That would have been a good place to leave things, and Elijah truly wanted to. But as he sat there sipping at the last of his coffee he knew there was one more thing he had to do. Not for William but rather for the church. In the end despite everything that had gone wrong, the doctor had still managed to extract the DNA of an angel. Something no one would have ever thought possible. And that was a big thing. It was proof, of a sort, that there were angels. And for years if not centuries the church had been losing believers to doubt. Fighting an every worsening battle with sceptics. Those who believed in nothing and wanted no one else to either. They could use that proof.

It was difficult broaching the subject. More than difficult, it was almost impossible. To ask a victim of a terrible crime to willingly expose himself and his deformities to a camera and potentially the world. It was almost as though he was harming him all over again. But it had to be done. And somehow he managed to choke the shameful words out.

“Actually I don't mind.” William agreed in a heartbeat. Far more easily than Elijah would have expected. Most people tended to hide away their disfigurements out of shame. But he wasn't ashamed. And he had no reason for shame. This was not of his doing.

“The only thing I ask is that the pictures not be made public. I have a family and I don't ever want them to see what's happened to me. They shouldn't have to see that.”

“Agreed.”

It was a small request and the right thing to do, so Elijah had no problem agreeing. The church's leaders might have a different view, but in the end they had to abide by the wishes of their parishioner. But Elijah discovered a more immediate problem when he saw William dropping his jacket and lifting his T shirt. He had a very large problem. He had to try and understand what he was seeing.

He'd guessed, he'd suspected, and he'd even been told but he still hadn't understood. And how could he understand? What he was seeing just wasn't right. The clothes had concealed so much.

It wasn't just the glow that shocked him, though that did take him aback. When it had just been his face he could see buried under the hood of his jacket, it had seemed minor. A small discolouration. But with the jacket gone and him standing out in the sun he knew it was no small thing. William was glowing gold, almost as though he was lit from within. That took some getting used to. But in the scheme of things it was probably the least of his differences.

He wasn't asymmetrical at least. But he was misshapen. A man caught between two forms, stuck in the middle and not really either. Neither fish nor fowl as they said. You could see the human in the body. The layout, the basic shape. But it wasn't right. His waist was far too narrow, his chest far too large, and with something growing out the front of it. Something bony that ran down his sternum. And everywhere the man was a contrast between a superman and an anorexic. His limbs were far too long and thin, but the muscles that bulged everywhere were far too large. His shoulders looked wrong. Bony beyond belief as the skin was stretched taut over them. But there were also huge slabs of muscle in front of them, resting on his chest and arms.

Elijah took the photo on his phone but a part of him didn't want to. Especially when William turned around so he could see his back. There it was more of the same. He could count every rib in his back. But he could also see muscles in his side and back that he was sure weren't part of the normal human anatomy.

But it was the wings that stole his thoughts. And they were wings, the stumps of them at least. But not like any wings he'd ever seen. William had two massive growths running all the way down his back, coming to a point somewhere around his tail bone at a guess and extending upward in a wide V to end at his shoulders. And the flesh wasn't just thick where it joined with his back, it had bones in it. Big bones.

On both sides of the wings he could see muscles. Bands of muscles that he knew were flight muscles. Those inside the V he guessed were for lifting his wings up after he'd flapped them. The others were for flapping, and unlike the rest they weren't all lined up. Some ran down from the bottom part of his wings to connect up somewhere in the front of his pelvis. The middle ones ran around his rib cage, he guessed to connect with the new bony growth following the downward line of his sternum. And the top ones ran right over the top of his shoulders.

“So what do you think?” William sounded almost chirpy as he spoke. “Do they look like wings and flight muscles to you?”

Elijah nodded as he clicked the button, not quite trusting himself to speak.

“I think so though it's hard to see what's back there. But I'm guessing that in a few more days at this rate I'll be able to flap them. I don't know what that'll feel like but I am curious.”

“And maybe, before the end, I'll be able to fly. It'll be something to look forward to. I've been dreaming of flying a lot lately.”

“Dreaming?” Elijah asked, his mind almost running on automatic.

“Strange dreams. Of flying, soaring like a bird. Dreams so real that I can almost seem to touch them. And I now have them even while I'm awake. Every time I let myself get a little bit distracted. It's very confusing.”

It was probably more evidence that his mind was slipping Elijah realised. If this was what was being done to his body, the changes to his brain had to be just as terrible. Reginald had told him that William had lost the ability to read and write. That must have scared him. Now he was reporting daydreams. Hallucinations in all likelihood. There had to be serious brain damage, and it would only get worse. But he knew better than to mention it. William probably already knew. And if he didn't why frighten him with more problems he could do nothing about?

“It may be instincts awakening. Like learning to walk all over again.”

“Maybe. I suspected as much when the doctor told me what he'd done. But I had them from the first night after the procedure, long before these things started to appear.”

Elijah couldn't answer him. He simply didn't have any idea of what was happening inside William’s body or his mind. But as he put the camera away in his pocket he wondered if perhaps some others in the church might. After all, they had some very advanced scientists among their congregation. And maybe the dreams weren't so much an angel thing as it was a bird thing? How did birds learn to fly after all? Maybe they had dreams too.

And maybe, Elijah thought after the meeting was over and as he slowly headed back to his church on foot, that was something they could help him with. All the religious experts in the world might not be able to tell him anything certain about angels. The doctors might not be able to give him any hope of surviving this thing. But a single biologist might be able to tell him about birds and dreams of learning to fly.

Chapter Eighteen.

The little rectory to the side of the church was full, and Elijah was beginning to wonder if they would be better to hold the meeting outside. Normally he was the only one who lived there – it was a small church and one priest was enough to look after it – so the living quarters were similarly sized. But even so it would have been more spacious if they weren't all gathered around the dining room table, crammed shoulder to shoulder. If they could have at least gone into the living room.

At least Reginald wasn't there. He was in the church praying. Something he did morning, noon and night. Even though Elijah had offered him the spare room, many nights he fell asleep in the church. His guilt and shame owned him now, and he was desperate to atone in some way. But he couldn't. And when he'd been told what William had said, that he had no desire to press charges, his guilt had only grown worse. In all his years Elijah had never seen a man more broken by his crimes. Which made it all the harder to understand how he could have done what he had.

The doctor didn't talk about that though. His conversation these days was very limited, and it always came back to the same thing. Guilt.

For a while Elijah had toyed with the idea of showing him the photos in the hope that he might have a better understanding of what was happening inside William's body. But he also worried that the sight might destroy him. And he was almost certain that Reginald could do nothing to stop the transformation anyway. He had no doubt that if the doctor could have he would have done it instantly.

It was the people around the table with him that he'd in the end asked for help from. And looking at them he had the uncomfortable thought that there was no help they could give. That instead they were the ones who needed help.

Pastor Franks stared at the others wondering if any of them had any idea of what to do. Because he didn't. And that frightened him. Though he had asked only for the information Mr. Simons had requested as well as something about how birds learned to fly, he had hoped they might be able to offer something more. Some counsel, maybe even some hope. They had a responsibility. To the man and to God. But responsibility was one thing; being able to live up to it was another. The pastor very much feared by the looks of the faces on the people at the table that they wouldn't be able to. That they would fail William Simons just when he needed them most. But then he had the horrible feeling that they had been failing for some time.

When the doctor had told him what he'd done the pastor had been by turns angry, hurt, shocked and betrayed. That someone could come to the church and steal from them in such a way was terrible. And that that person could then go out and intentionally toy with another's life as though he was a rat in a research trial was worse. But the thing that hurt the most was that Reginald had always seemed to him to be a good man. Devout in his belief. He had trusted him. The betrayal cut deep. It made him doubt how well he knew his congregation.

Yet at the same time he had to wonder; could he have done more for the doctor? Could he have watched him more closely? Seen where his dark desires were leading him and stopped him? Elijah didn't know the answer. But he feared it.

And then when he had visited William and seen first-hand the damage the doctor had done to him his shame had become worse. To be responsible in any way no matter how slight for that was a terrible thing. So even if the doctor could do nothing for him – and Reginald had sworn repeatedly that he couldn't as he hid in the church and prayed ceaselessly – Elijah had determined that he would. Or at least he would try.

Because of that he had brought William Simons' request to his brothers and asked for their help. Not just with the knowledge he sought, but with the biological side of things. Mr. Simons might have given up, but that didn't mean that he had to.

It was for that reason too that he'd taken the photos and brought them before the others. So that they could see for themselves the terrible damage that had been done to him. It wasn't only about proof. In fact he wondered if using them as proof of anything was even right. Long ago Kierkegaard had said that it was necessary that belief was an act of faith. That it must always be a leap beyond what could be known, reasoned or proven. And in a way the photos seemed to run directly against his argument. They made belief too easy. That could be more dangerous to the faith than scepticism.

Someone had printed the photos out and they were lying on the table in front of them all; huge A4 sized images on glossy paper that showed every single iota of William's condition. But seeing them there Elijah worried that they were there for the wrong reason. That they were there simply for the satisfaction of vulgar curiosity. Not to help them to help Mr. Simons.

And now that a meeting had been called and the bishop was in attendance along with others, Elijah was worried that its purpose wasn't quite what he had hoped for either. There were no doctors with them and no biologists. No detailed reports on encounters with angels and no scientific papers on birds and flying. And the questions the bishop had asked so far weren't those he had expected. In fact they seemed to have little to do with William Simons at all, and everything to do with a hospital that had fallen into a sink hole.

“So the hospital sank into the ground the moment Mr. Simons was given the injection?”

The bishop asked yet another question that Elijah simply hadn't expected and it caught him a little off guard. He had to think for a moment, collect his thoughts as he remembered what Reginald had told him. And the bishop looked worried he noticed, which didn't seem good. But he also sounded as if he knew something.

“Within the hour apparently. While the trial was running.”

“Long enough for the angelic essence to combine with the human.” The Bishop shook his head sadly – or maybe in disbelief. “I should have guessed it was something like this. But I never thought. I never imagined it was possible. Or that anyone would be so insane as to try.”

“Your Excellency?”

Despite his worries Elijah was intrigued. It seemed that the bishop knew something about what had been done. And that placed him far ahead of him.

“That a line would be crossed. And crossed so terribly. Arrogance and stupidity. A modern day Tower of Babel.”

The bishop wasn't making sense Elijah thought, and yet he had the look on his face of someone who knew something. Some dark and terrible truth. So he waited patiently for him to explain. The others did as well, most of them Elijah guessed, having as little understanding as he did.

He still wasn't completely clear why they were all here in his rectory. Granted the theft of the artefact was a terrible crime and now that they knew who had done it they needed to consider what their response should be.

And what Reginald Millen had done to William Simons was an even worse crime. It had been human experimentation and was every bit as repugnant as what the Nazi's had done in World War Two. But what they could do about that was next to nothing. At least as far as stopping it was concerned. He wasn't sure that all the hospitals in the world could. The doctor himself said it was irreversible. There was little they could do except try to bring comfort to his victim. But that didn't require the attendance of a bishop, two aides, three more priests and a religious scholar. A religious scholar who didn't seem to be particularly concerned about collating the information they had about angels for Mr. Simons, the very reason William had spoken to them and let them take photos in the first place.

“Bishop Benenson?” Elijah prodded him when he grew silent for too long.

“Doctor Millen did something that hasn't been done in thousands of years. Something that should never have been done again. And in doing so he created a rift between the celestial and the Earthly. And from that everything that's happened has flown. The sink hole, the ice storm, the fire storm – all of them.”

His words drew a couple of gasps from around the table and all eyes suddenly focused on the bishop. They had come together to help a man in need, and suddenly he was talking about the disasters plaguing the city and somehow connecting them.

“You think that all of that is connected to this?”

The pastor wasn't convinced. Not of that. Weird though all the happenings might be, how could they possibly be related to the doctor's bizarre experiment? And yet he was curious. Even intrigued. And he couldn't dismiss it completely out of hand. Though he could see no logical connection between the different things, they were all bizarre and they had all occurred at the same time. What was it that detectives said? That there was no such thing as a coincidence.

“I know it is. Just as I know that what the doctor thought he was doing wasn't what he actually did.”

“He thought he would transform a man into an angel.”

Which was something Elijah still couldn't believe he had even considered possible. He understood the intent behind it. Or some of it now that Reginald – in between his bouts of depression, guilt and mania – had started confessing a little more. It seemed that he had thought that the world was sliding into darkness and that they needed to bring some light into it. His solution though – that he could somehow halt the slide through this mad science – was shocking to him. The doctor was not completely rational. Not perhaps even close. And as to what he'd actually done, Elijah didn't know. But he feared it would end up in a painful death. Looking back on his talks with Will Simons he knew the young man feared the same. And when the doctor had come to him and confessed, he had said the same. Will Simons had called him a murderer and the doctor could not accept that.

“But that's not what he did.” The bishop took a deep breath and then stared straight at him. “The sons of God found the daughters of man attractive. Remember that?”

“Of course. Genesis. The Cainites and the Sethites.”

“No.” The Bishop shook his head a bit more forcefully. “The Fallen and human women. Bringing forth between them the race of giants and warriors known as the nephilim. You should use the literal interpretation for the term “the sons of God”. And the literal interpretation is angels. It's used elsewhere. The Book of Job for a start.”

Pastor Franks took a moment to think before saying anything. He knew that many did accept the literal biblical interpretation of the term “sons of God”, but in this instance he didn't. It went against reason. But that he realised was a matter for another time. There was a more important question.

“You think Doctor Millen has created a nephilim?” And while Elijah might know little of them, for they were only mentioned in the Bible a handful of times, he did know they were bad news.

“I think he has created that which all angels fear. A creature that is part man and part angel. Part of heaven and part of Earth. And he has done it in a way that violates all the laws of nature. For there was no coming together of a man and a woman. There was no consent by one parent for the act let alone the conception. It is an act of rape. And that which was created is both the deceived parent and the innocent child.”

“And now that there is a nephilim walking the Earth, a creature not seen since before the flood that swept all such wickedness away, the Fallen are stirring. They finally see a chance for freedom from their prison.”

“The Fallen? You think hell is breaking free?” Elijah almost couldn't believe he was hearing it, let alone saying the words. And looking around the table he guessed the others didn't either.

“Fire and ice falling from the sky? The ground opening up and swallowing whole buildings? Specifically the building where this nephilim was conceived and at that very moment? I know it is.”

His words were greeted with a stunned silence as everyone there tried to absorb them. And all of them were asking themselves the one same question:

Could he be right?

Elijah knew that there were Fallen, though what precisely they were he didn't know. Some said they were fallen angels, others called them demons. Psychiatrists called them schizophrenia and other similar terms. All he knew was that he sometimes saw their handiwork in the world. Not possessions as Hollywood would have everyone believe. They weren't usually that direct. But rather temptation. They didn't possess, they whispered. They spoke to the souls of the ambitious and told them of greatness beyond ambition. They whispered to the souls of the greedy of wealth beyond wealth. They whispered to the souls of the wronged and told them not of justice but of revenge.