Flight Of Angels ~

by

Marilyn Gardiner

In a single movement she leaped out of bed, jabbed the button on the recorder and ran to the door. Nothing. By the dim baseboard lighting she could see that the hall was empty. Yet, she could plainly hear the voice descending the stairs!

She fumbled for the fishing line on her thumb and pulled, but it gave loosely. She pulled again and it went completely slack, sagging to the floor. Panic filled her chest, knotted at her throat. She reeled in the fishing line, hand over hand and stood with the knot at the end caught between her two fingers. With horror she realized that Matt wasn't there. He wasn't at the end of the line. She was alone.

"Ah-h-h-h-h--" the voice wept, honing her attention on some spot that she couldn't see, only feel. Surely there were tears. No anguish like this could be born without tears. Poor Elizabeth. What was causing such anguish? She clutched the door frame with one hand. Now. Now was the time. She willed herself to speak.

"Elizabeth, is that you?" Her voice was so weak and trembly she could barely hear herself. She tried again. "Elizabeth, please talk to me. I want to help."

To her amazement the voice faltered as if the body had stopped forward motion. She could feel a presence; something was there, about halfway down the stairs. Without knowing how, she knew it. She could see every spindle on the railing, the grain of the carpet, the stained-glass oval panel on the front door below. Not even a shadow stood on the stair. But there was something there. The hair on her arms felt electrified.

"Elizabeth, what is it? Why do you cry?"

The presence was coming toward her. Her heart banged clumsily against her ribs and her lungs seemed to have collapsed. She couldn't breathe. She knew she was looking through whatever, whoever, was there, and she knew as strongly as she knew the shape of her own hand that Elizabeth was near.

She backed up, into the bedroom. Silent now, the presence followed. There was no sound. The house was filled with cold dead darkness. She wanted to scream, but her voice wouldn't work. She wanted to run, but her feet were somehow rooted to the floor. She felt slightly disoriented, as if she were standing in a soundproof room. She could see but hear nothing. Her brain seemed to be slogging through thick mud.

And then the tendrils of smoke began to curl around her legs, gently pushing, urging. Her fingertips tingled. She was going...going....

"No!" Her voice filled the room. "No. Talk to me, Elizabeth. I want to be your friend. Talk to me."

The tentacles of smoke backed away as if from the sucking wind of a holocaust and hovered, waiting.

"Oh-h-h-h-h--" the voice began again. Whispery soft and delicate as the tones of a child. Strange words poured around her ears, like cream from a pitcher. Words that had no meaning, full of pain and prophecy. Warning.

"Help me," Beth said stretching out her arms. "I don't understand."

If she hadn't been looking at her hands, Beth would have thought a feather had been drawn across the palms. Something had brushed her hands, but there was nothing there. And the voice began again. "Teich! Luathaich!" An urgency, desperate with need, and this time she knew, she knew what Elizabeth was saying. "Run! Danger!"

A crash of splintering sound broke the silence. From downstairs it sounded as if every breakable piece of china in the house had been thrown against the wall and shattered.

From below two voices shouted at the same time.

"What the hell are you doing here?" The bellow, Kevin's voice, echoed through the house bouncing and reverberating from the walls, flowing up the stairs, filling the rooms.

"Don't move or I'll drop you where you stand." This was Matt, promising mayhem in magnificent proportions.

Dazedly, as if she were feeling her way through dense fog, Beth moved to the top of the stairs.

Just inside the front door Kevin flipped the light switch and stood, still in a crouch, arms extended like a samurai wrestler, ready to protect house and home and wife from whatever danger presented itself. Matt's upheld arm, poised and ready to let fly, held a poker from the fireplace. A corner curio cabinet lay on its face in the hall, shards of crystal and glass everywhere. The oval glass in the door held only jagged daggers of glass. Kevin and the carpet wore what was left. It was as if she were dreaming, yet she knew what she saw and heard were real.

Kevin straightened, the poker still in his hand. "Matt! What in the name of heaven is going on?"

"Kevin! Why didn't you ring the doorbell like any sane man would do? I almost brained you, man."

Kevin's eyes turned dark as they made the trip from Matt up the staircase to Beth. His voice was thick with anger. "Just what in hell are you doing inside my house, with my wife?"

Neither man moved from his original stance.

"I'm doing your job. Trying to help her. Protect her."

"I can take care of her. What do you think I'm here for? I don't usually wander around in the rain for my health."

"You could have fooled her." Matt's head jerked toward the top of the stairs, but his eyes never left Kevin. "She's scared half to death and pregnant and all you're good for is jumping to wrong conclusions and making fact-free accusations. That's taking care of her?"

Slowly Kevin relaxed. He shook his body like a dog sheds water and bits and infinitesimal pieces of glass flew wild. His arms fell to his sides and his head raised to Beth. Suddenly his eyes widened. "Are you all right? Beth--babe?" He charged toward the steps.

Blackness seemed to be closing in on Beth. Through an opaque haze, there was a pit yawning at the bottom of the stairs. She seemed to be sliding, sliding....

"Och! A ghraidh mo chridhe." And the darkness enveloped her.