Murder of Angels (18 page)

Niki Ky folds herself shut again, creasing herself as easily as tissue-thin sheets of origami paper.

Doors open, and doors close.

And before the voices from the television and the gentle, incandescent light of the hotel room, before Marvin and the certainty of what has to happen next, what she has to
do
next, Niki looks over her shoulder, and even in this place that is no place, with the gulf of an eternity yawning between her and it, she can see the shadow burning.

One day in April, almost a year ago. A day when Daria was supposed to go with her to see Dr. Dalby, but then something came up at the last minute, the band or an interview or something else that couldn’t wait, and so Niki went alone. It wasn’t raining that day, but there was no sun, and the fog outside his office window was so thick there might have been nothing beyond it, the entire universe shrunk down to that one room and the old man watching her while he fidgeted with his mustache.

“You had to be there, I guess,” Niki said. “It’s complicated, what happened to Spyder.”

“There’s no rush,” the psychologist said. “You can take all the time you need. You don’t have to try to tell the whole story in one session.”

Niki laughed and shook her head. “I couldn’t tell the whole story in a
hundred
sessions,” she replied and hugged the needlepoint anemones and geraniums.

“Then don’t tell me the whole story. Just tell me the important parts, the parts that you think matter.”

“Yeah, the parts that matter,” she said and took a deep breath. Outside, the fog made gray, floating shapes, phantoms of water vapor and pollution to match the phantoms in her head. “That’ll be a breeze.”

“No, it won’t. But it might be worth the effort.”

“And it might not.”

“That’s right, Nicolan. It might not. It might be a dead end. A complete waste of time. That’s just the chance you have to take.”

And she drew another deep breath, a sip of water from the bottle on the floor beside her feet, and started talking, letting the past drain like infection. How she came to Birmingham, still running from Danny’s suicide, how she met Daria and Spyder, the first night she heard Daria sing, the first time she saw the house on Cullom Street.

“There were all these goth kids who hung around with Spyder,” she said and took another sip of water, swished it around in her mouth a few seconds before swallowing. “They thought she was the coolest thing in the world, you know? They practically worshipped her. I suppose she gave them meaning, or purpose, or something.”

“Did they resent you?” Dr. Dalby asked. “Did they see you as an intruder?”

“You’re jumping ahead,” she replied, and he apologized and told her to continue.

“There were these two guys, Byron and Walter, and a girl named Robin. She was Spyder’s lover. She’s the one who performed the peyote ceremony in Spyder’s basement.”

“And Spyder tried to stop her?”

“Yeah, she was afraid. But Robin went ahead and did it anyway. I don’t know exactly what happened. Spyder would never tell me. But it was something bad. They all freaked out, and she had to go down there after them, down there where her father had raped her when she was just a little kid.”

“That would have been very traumatic for her.”

Niki stared at him a second and then laughed again. “You think so?” she asked, and shook her head.

“I’m sorry. It’s a professional hazard, I suppose, stating the obvious. Go on.”

Her hands were trembling, even though she’d hardly gotten started, all the worst of it still unspoken, and she hugged the brocade pillow tighter.
If Daria had come,
she told herself,
it wouldn’t be so hard, and I wouldn’t be so scared.
But she knew that was a lie.

“Spyder said Robin was into all sorts of occult crap. Wicca and séances and tarot cards. Peyote. Just about anything that came along, I think.”

“Isn’t that a bit like what you told me about New Orleans, you and your friends and all the things you did in the old cemeteries? Your ceremonies to raise ghosts?”

Niki shrugged. “No, I think Robin must have been a lot worse than we ever were. At least, that’s the way Spyder made her sound.”

“When our myths fail us,” Dr. Dalby said thoughtfully, “or when we’re never given myths to start with—”

“—we’re forced to invent them,” Niki finished for him.

The old man nodded his head and smiled. “That’s what you were doing in New Orleans, and it sounds like that’s what Robin was doing in Spyder’s basement. But it can be very dangerous, creating myths. That’s one of the things that children should learn, but rarely ever do.”

“I don’t know what happened down there,” Niki said again. “But afterwards, they started seeing things, awful things, or maybe they only thought they were seeing things. And then, what Spyder did to try to help, I’m pretty sure she only made it worse. She told them a story, just something she made up so they wouldn’t be so afraid of whatever was happening to them. She was scared she was going to lose them, and they were everything in the world to her. Her story was supposed to make them less afraid, but I think it also made them need her more.”

“You think she did that on purpose? You think she was manipulating them, trying to control them?”

Niki thought about that for a moment, and watched the fog outside the office window.

“You don’t have to answer, if you’d rather not.”

“I know,” she said, and then “Spyder was so afraid of being alone. I think that scared her more than anything.”

“You’ve already told me she had no family, that her friends were all she had. And in a place like Alabama, someone like Spyder must have had a hard time finding friends. So that would have made it even more difficult for her, I’d imagine.”

“Yeah. Anyway, she told them all this fucked-up story about how they were descended from angels. That there’d been a war in Heaven and there’d been some angels that had refused to take a side in the war. Instead, they’d stolen a stone from God, because they thought he couldn’t be trusted with it, and they hid it on the earth somewhere.”

“Spyder didn’t make that story up, Nicolan,” Dr. Dalby said, and his eyes sparkled in the light from the lamp on his desk. “That’s quite an old story. The stone’s part of the tradition surrounding the Holy Grail. It’s been called the
lapis exilis,
and
lapis lapsus ex illis stellis,
the stone that came from the stars. Sometimes it’s actually considered a part of the grail.”

“Spyder read a lot,” Niki said, still watching the fog.

“What else did Spyder tell them?” he asked.

“She said God sent other angels to find the ones who’d stolen the stone, to kill them and bring it back to him. And because they knew they’d be found sooner or later, the angels came up with a way to take the stone apart and put the pieces inside themselves. Then they mated with mortal men and women, and the stone was passed along, hidden inside the babies that were born. They thought God would never hurt innocent children to get it back.”

“That’s the story of the Nephilim. At least, it’s based on the story of the Nephilim.”

“That’s a goth band.”

“Is it?” the psychologist asked her, and smiled. “Let me read you something,” and he got up and selected a black leather Bible from the tall bookshelf near his desk. He flipped through the onionskin pages for a moment, and “Here it is,” he said. “Genesis 6:4. ‘The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterwards—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.’”

“Oh,” Niki sighed and reached for her water bottle. “I didn’t know Spyder ever read the Bible.”

“There are many names for the Nephilim,” Dr. Dalby said and sat down again. “They turn up in both the Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls. They’re called the Emim, the Rephaim, the Gibborim, the Awwim. They’re supposed to have been giants. They were corrupt and corrupted mankind, and eventually God sent Gabriel to start a civil war to destroy them all.”

“So, you think Spyder took those stories from the Bible and used them to make up her own story.”

“That’s certainly what it sounds like. We call it syncretization, taking elements of older stories and putting them together in new ways, or combining them with other stories to make new and more useful myths.”

Niki nodded, wondering if the psychologist actually believed anything himself, or only weighed religions and myths based on their utility. Outside, the fog swirled and made dim shapes that were there and then gone again, a mirage of silvery, ephemeral faces and bodies, and Niki looked away, looked at the clock, instead. She still had fifteen minutes until her time was up.

“Syncretization can be a very healthy thing,” Dr. Dalby said. “It’s often a normal part of cultural evolution.”

“Spyder told them they were
descended
from those angels. The ones who stole the stone, the Nephilim. She told them it was still there inside of them, and they were being hunted, but
she
could protect them. She made a dream catcher from strands of their hair and told them that the things hunting them would try to get to them through bad dreams, but the dream catcher would keep them safe. Now, does that sound healthy to you, Dr. Dalby?”

The psychologist closed the Bible and shook his head, but didn’t say anything.

“She told them that Robin had shown the angels where they were, during the peyote ceremony.”

“Do you think she was trying to punish Robin, by telling them that?”

“She loved Robin,” Niki said.

“Even so, she must have been very angry. Sometimes, we’re much harder on people
because
we love them. You know that.”

Niki stared at him and then looked at the floor.

“Spyder told them they’d be safe,” she continued. “She hid the dream catcher inside an old aquarium full of black widows that she kept in her bedroom. One night, Byron and Robin tried to steal it. That’s how Robin died, that’s how…” but then the knot in her throat hurt too much to keep talking, and she covered her face with her hands so he wouldn’t see her cry.

“Nicolan, you can stop now if you need to. You’ve said more than enough for one session. I’m very proud of you.”

And so she sat weeping on the sofa, and the clock on his desk slowly ticked off the seconds, and outside the fog struggled against nature to make something solid of itself, something from almost nothing, something more than shifting, insubstantial mist.

Around her, the city has begun to revolve, convulsing, turning itself inside out. Nothing here is even half solid anymore, nothing that she can’t see through at a glance, and Niki stands outside the hotel on Steuart Street and is afraid that she’s waited too long. Maybe if she hadn’t wasted so much time trying to reach the airport, or if she hadn’t gone into the restroom at the hospital, or lingered so long in the nightmare of Spyder’s house, fooled by the grinning shadow with yellow eyes. She understands now, but now may be too late. Overhead, the sky flashes a million shades of blue and black and gray and orange, a million days superimposed one upon the other, a million flickering skies, worlds beyond existence and imagining. There is no still point remaining anywhere, no eye to this storm. Niki fights the dizziness and nausea, the pain in her hand; she grits her teeth and leans against a small tree growing outside the hotel. But the tree keeps becoming other trees, and things that aren’t quite trees, and lampposts, and street signs, and stone pillars, and she thinks about sitting down on the sidewalk instead. If it’s too late, if she’s fucked it all up by dragging her feet, this is probably as good a place to die as any.

And then the small white bird at her feet, the bird which hadn’t been there only a moment before, glares anxiously up at her with eyes like small red berries, and “You have to try,” it says. “You’re the Hierophant, and without you we’re all doomed. Without you, the Dragon—”

“Shut up, bird,” Niki whispers, trying not to vomit as the sky strobes and the earth beneath her feet twists and lurches. “Fuck off and let me die in peace. I want this to end now. I want it to be finished.”

“No, you don’t understand,” it squawks indignantly. “I
can’t
leave you.” The white bird flaps its wings and flutters in the indecisive air a few feet above Niki’s head. “The Weaver sent me to show you the way across. You can’t stay here, Niki Ky. This place is rejecting you. Can’t you feel it? It’s trying to push you out.”

Niki shuts her eyes, but that only makes the dizziness worse, and she immediately opens them again.

“You have to follow me
now,
” the bird says frantically.

“Birds don’t fucking talk,” she tells it. “Even I know that,” and she looks longingly back at the hotel, the shiny brass poles supporting a fancy red awning, tall doors leading into the brightly lit lobby. Ten minutes ago, she was still upstairs in the room with Marvin. She’d awakened from the nowhere place to the gentle salt-and-pepper light of the television. He’d left it on, the sound off, and fallen asleep in the chair beside the window. Marvin was snoring very softly, and his head lolled forward, his chin almost touching his chest. Outside, the sky was a wild, auroral thing, brilliant seizures of night and day, day and night, stars and sun and moons she didn’t recognize. Niki got up, moving as quietly as she could, as quickly as she dared, praying to nothing in particular that she wouldn’t wake him. She slipped on her blue Muppet-fur coat and her boots, not bothering with the yellow laces. The laces could wait. Niki took her backpack and whatever was already stuffed inside it and didn’t leave a note because she was pretty sure there was nothing more to say that mattered.

She left the door to the room standing open, afraid shutting it might make too much noise, and she didn’t want to have to argue with Marvin anymore, didn’t want him trying to stop her or following her.

“The Weaver said that we have to go south,” the bird squawks. “She said we have to reach the bridge while there’s still time.”