The Day the Angels Fell Page 4

  Eventually I drifted to my bedroom, numb, and my dad came up and said words, but he could barely talk and the words he said didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Sometimes there are no words that fit into the space provided. But I didn’t need to hear any words, because when that lightning bolt had struck the tree, in that instant it was like a piece of me had vanished. I felt it flutter around inside my chest, a tiny, frantic moth, and then it was gone.

  I knew that fluttering sensation was my mom leaving.

  After my dad talked to me, he went back downstairs because neighbors had started to arrive and he had to call the funeral home and there was a lot to do in the face of such devastation. I walked quietly down the stairs, through the kitchen, and out the back door without saying hello to anyone. I felt eyes on me, the eyes of people who didn’t know what to say, who had also come to the realization that words can at times be powerless. I wandered into the cornfield, the stalks whispering around my knees, and cut out to the road. I didn’t want to go out the lane because I’d probably have to talk to someone.

  I walked north, past Mr. Jinn’s lane, as far as you could go on Kincade Road. Where it ended in the trees, the ground was flat and graded for a longer road, but the work had never been completed. Abra and I called it the Road to Nowhere. Before I walked into the shadows, I looked over my shoulder toward the town. I remembered that the fair was being set up, and I searched for the towering Ferris wheel. Maybe they hadn’t put it together yet, or maybe the swells of the fields were too high. In any case, I couldn’t see anything. Only the darkness of a storm giving way to the dark of night, and the flashing lights of the ambulance that for some reason no one had turned off.

  At the northern edge of the Road to Nowhere there was a path that led even deeper into the woods, all the way to the river. At one point, where the eastern and western mountains began to converge, the river rammed right up against a stone wall. The rock climbed thirty feet into the air, a kind of cliff. And at the base of that cliff, at the very end of the path, was a small cave, barely big enough for me to sit in.

  Not far from the small cave was an old graveyard. The stones were mostly ancient and covered in green moss, and quite a few of them were broken off or leaning to one side. The lettering was worn and nearly impossible to read, and some of the graves were actually old crypts, tombs large enough to walk into if the doors still would have opened. The church had its own cemetery, and that’s where most of the folks in Deen were buried. This graveyard, the one out in the woods, was from a different era, and a lot of people talked about it being haunted, but it never really frightened me. There were even trees growing up among the headstones, so to me it felt like just another part of the forest.

  From that spot in the small cave I looked out over the river beyond the graveyard, maybe fifty yards wide at that point and rushing fast with all of the day’s rain. In the winter you could see the eastern mountain from there, up through the leafless branches, but in the summer everything was close and thick and stifling.

  I sat in there for a long time and watched the water and wished I had never seen Icarus, wished I had never chased after him into the rain. The storm had stopped and the moon was out and a silvery light fell down all around me through the trees, sparkling on the river.

  When I thought that maybe everyone had left my house, I walked back through the darkness. But some of that darkness stayed inside me. I barely recognized it at the time, but it would grow into a heavy shadow, something that would cause me to do many things I never would have done otherwise. Darkness can do that if you let it. It can move you.

  By the time I got home it was much later, at a time of night when I was usually fast asleep, but I could still hear people milling around. I crept in through the mudroom, kept my head down while walking through the small crowd in the kitchen, and went up into my room. Silence followed me through the room, and I could feel their eyes again. I could feel the powerless words no one was saying.

  From my room upstairs I heard the coffeemaker in the kitchen sputter out another pot of coffee and muffled voices offering condolences. Someone knocked on my bedroom door. I didn’t want to answer because I didn’t want to talk to anyone. Earlier, when my dad had come to my room, he had said a few quiet words about doing whatever I wanted to do. I could stay upstairs or I could come down. Whatever I wanted. I had hoped that meant I didn’t have to talk to anyone.

  But out of curiosity, I walked over and opened the door.

  It was Abra. As soon as she saw me, she burst into tears and hugged me and put her face against my shoulder. She wept, sobbing like I myself hadn’t yet sobbed, and it made me feel good to know that she missed my mom as much as I did. But it also made me feel jealous, or guilty, because I hadn’t been able to cry very much, and it felt wrong, the not crying, so eventually I kind of pushed her away. The two of us walked over to sit on my bed, leaving the door open.

  “It’s just . . . it’s just . . . awful,” she said. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded. Outside the storm had started up again. Rain pelted the glass, but there was no more thunder, no more lightning. That had been reserved for my mother’s death, and once she was gone the storm had no more use for it.

  “Did you see it happen?” she asked with a very serious face.

  “Kind of,” I said.

  “Was it horrible?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “What will you do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you think you’ll stay here, on the farm? Or do you think you’ll . . . move?”

  I shrugged, but the thought of moving hurt. That felt like something I could cry over. I had never lived anywhere else. Besides, the farm’s roots went deep in our family. My grandfather had bought that farm when he first got married. He and my grandmother were both gone, but the farm was a part of me. It felt like blood and bone.

  “I don’t think my dad will want to leave,” I said, but my voice betrayed my uncertainty.

  She nodded, and I must have convinced her with those few words, because she seemed happier after that, as if not all had been lost.

  “Abra!” her father’s voice called from downstairs. “Time to go.”

  She stood, and I knew she wanted to hug me again, but I was done with hugs. I was done with everything.

  “How’s your little brother?” I mumbled.

  “He’s good. Really good. Just starting to roll over and get into my stuff.”

  “That’s pretty neat,” I said, but my voice was hollow and the words didn’t come out all the way.

  “Yeah,” she said, nodding. She acted like she was going to give me a hug, but that started to feel strange, so she didn’t. She just walked out.

  I followed her into the hall, but when she went downstairs I drifted into the neighboring bedroom, the empty spare room where I had watched everything happen, since it had a better view of the driveway. The attic door was in that room, and I never completely turned my back on it, because who knows what will come through an attic door when you’re not paying attention?

  From there I watched Abra and her father walk through the rain, dimly lit by the light pouring from our windows. Abra turned once, looked up to where I was, and waved. I waved back, a small wave with only my hand, not moving anything else. She and her father walked through the night, and soon they were gone.

  I had strange dreams that night.

  I’m flying over a dark ocean, my wings sturdy and strong. The sky stretches out ahead of me, and there is no reason to go back. But the sun is hot and feathers strip from my wings, one at a time. I glance back and see them all dropping like a trail of bread crumbs or falling stars. I start going down, drifting toward the waves.

  Then I see land! I crash onto a flat island that is nothing but a grassy plain. I hike for miles, the blades of grass soft and long, and when I look back I see the dark green trail of crushed grass I leave behind me. When I arrive at the very center of the island there is an oak tree, the tree my father
told me about in the story, the one that brought the rain. I know this not because someone told me but only in the way you know certain things in dreams.

  I look up and my mom is in the tree, high up and calling for my help. She wears a white dress that billows around her like a sail. I start climbing, climbing, climbing, but the tree grows taller and my mother lifts farther and farther away. When I look down there is no island anymore, just the tree I’m in, growing in the middle of a vast ocean, and the water is rising.

  Then I woke up.

  It was still the middle of the night, but suddenly I wasn’t sad anymore. I knew what I would do—it was as clear as anything I had ever known.

  I would bring back my mother.

  Somehow, somewhere, there would be a way to do it. Maybe it would be through the magic of a tree like the one my father had told me about. Maybe it would happen after I built myself a set of wings and flew to wherever it was she had gone. If I found her, I could convince her to come back with me. Maybe I’d have to travel to a faraway land and find the secret to bringing someone back from the dead.

  It didn’t matter. My father had told me many stories of warriors and heroes who had managed to travel to that place people go when they die, and I thought there must be some truth behind all those stories. I would find the way. I felt an immense sense of purpose and peace in knowing I had a mission, and that mission was to bring her back.

  I remembered the three women. If anyone knew what I had to do to bring back my mother or where I could go to find her, it seemed to me that they would know. There was something about them that felt like the answer to every unknown thing. It was easy to believe that hidden somewhere in the folds of those great gowns was the truth I needed. I would go to the fair and I would find them and they would tell me how.

  I fell asleep and slept peacefully the rest of the night. But the darkness I had taken with me from the cemetery grew just a little bit inside me.

  6

  “WHY DON’T YOU TWO meet me back here in one hour?” Abra’s mom suggested. She was a plump woman with curly brown hair. She smiled a lot, but worry clung to her like a subtle perfume, and it took all of Abra’s cunning to get her mom to approve of anything that might be even slightly dangerous. I have no idea how Abra talked her mom into dropping us off at the fair on opening night, but somehow she had. I can only believe that my memories of those days are true, that they were simpler times when children were safe walking the streets alone, at least in Deen.

  “Mom!” Abra complained. “That’s not any time at all!”

  Mrs. Miller sighed and looked down at her watch. Cars coasted past us along Kincade Road, dropping people off at the sidewalk before turning off into one of the large grassy areas to park. The lights from the fair reflected off Mrs. Miller’s face, blinking and changing color.

  “Okay, two hours, but that’s it.”

  Abra squealed. “Thanks, Mom! Thank you thank you thank you thank you—”

  “Fine, fine,” she said, smiling, but her face grew serious. “Listen to me right now, both of you. You are allowed in the food area and the front part of the ride area, but no going back into all of that . . .”

  She couldn’t seem to come up with a word for the part of the fair that was the farthest from the road, the area down the hill beyond the rides. She waved her hand at us, knowing that we knew what she meant.

  “That darkness,” she muttered.

  Our fair had five parts. Not that they were divided into specific categories or marked with boundaries, but you could tell as you went from one part into the next. As you left the road and went down the hill, you descended deeper and deeper into the various sections.

  The first part of the fair was made up of the place where everyone parked, plus the road, plus a large chunk of food tents. It was always packed full of people of all ages, and it smelled the best too. Cotton candy, funnel cakes, fried anything-you-wanted-to-eat, candy apples—my teeth began to ache as soon as I so much as walked into that area. The lights there were bright as vendors tried to outdo each other with flashing bulbs and gaudy signs. Here everyone was in a happy and smiling stupor brought on by sugar and grease.

  Down the hill a short distance—the tents and pavilions were all laid out roughly in rows—you got to the animal pens. Here you could find various award-winning beasts on display: sheep, cows, horses, chickens, rabbits, that sort of thing. The lights in this area were bright and glaring and uniform. Plain white. You always knew when you had wandered out of the food area because the animal area smelled like horse poop, the people had serious looks on their faces as they waited for the judges’ scores, and they all wore overalls.

  Past the food, past the animals, were the kiddie rides. Tiny Tilt-A-Whirls and miniature roller coasters roared around slides and the crown jewel of that area, the carousel. Loud, happy carnival music pierced your ears. This far down the hill, the smell of the food was a distant memory. The carnies who ran the kiddie rides had abnormally large smiles and probably doubled as Santa’s creepy elves in the winter. Parents surrounded the rides, pointing and waving and laughing.

  Farther down, farther in was the fourth area of the fair. These were the serious rides. The ones that threatened to steal the food you had just eaten at the top of the hill. This area was marked by teenagers hanging on to each other, screaming voices, and large chunks of shadows. Sometimes, if you didn’t pay attention to the general flow of traffic, you would end up behind a ride in some kind of dark dead end.

  This area housed the Ferris wheel, the House of Horrors, and anything that spun you wrong-side up or tried to turn you inside out. There the carnies were indifferent, even mean. They sneered when they took your tickets and took pleasure in stopping the rides at the most awkward moments, like when you were upside down. I think they kept track of how many kids they could make throw up, as if it was a contest they held among themselves.

  At the very bottom of the hill, past the serious rides, was the “darkness” Mrs. Miller had mentioned. There the trees came up close to the small tents and dark trailers. There, for only one dollar, you could see a woman with two heads or a man with the body of a snake. Old, blind hags would tell you your fortune for fifty cents, or put a curse on your enemy.

  When I was in kindergarten, one of my friends was accidentally stabbed with scissors in the art room when he tripped and fell. His blood spilled all over the floor like paint, more blood than I had ever seen. One of the girls passed out, and the art teacher’s skin turned clammy and white as she called for help through the intercom. Later we found out that he had been to the dark part of the fair—who knows what someone his age had been doing there, or if it was even true. The kids all said he had mouthed off to one of the old carnies, who had in turn cursed him, calling down his death, and that the curse had almost worked.

  There, among the trees, you could also see the remnants of campfires and tattered tents strung up with the help of low-lying branches. That’s where the carnies lived during the weeklong fair, down at the bottom of it all—the darkest place—where the air smelled of wood smoke and porta potties, and a constant fog drifted like a lazy river.

  But when Mrs. Miller dropped off Abra and me, we were still on the sidewalk surrounded by the light and the laughter of happy people eating fair food. She put a five-dollar bill in each of our hands, and we turned to face the fair, our eyes transfixed by the glory and freedom spreading down the hill in front of us.

  “Two hours!” she called again with that same old worry in her voice as she drove away.

  “Ready?” Abra said. I nodded and followed her.

  It had been only forty-eight hours since my mother had died, but I couldn’t wait to get to the fair. I knew the old women were there—I could feel it.

  My mind raced. Abra would never disobey her mother and join me if I had to go into the Darkness. How could I get away from her? The words the woman had etched into the table had somehow found their way into me, and nothing could erase them.

 
Find the Tree of Life.

  “What do you want to do first?” Abra asked.

  “Bumper cars?”

  She laughed and nodded and led the way through the crowd. We would buy food at the end if we had any money left. She reached back and grabbed my sleeve and pulled me along. That first hour passed quickly: bumper cars, the large Tilt-A-Whirl, and finally running into some friends from school who convinced us to join them on rides I was too scared to go on when it was only Abra and me. They ran back up to the street to meet the parent who was picking them up, and Abra and I still had some time left before her mother was going to meet us.

  The best part about that night was that I forgot about real life for entire patches of time. Later I would feel guilty about it, but while we were on the rides and screaming and laughing with our friends, for brief moments I forgot that my mom had died. I forgot about the lightning tree. I forgot that my dad waited at home for me, silent and lost. So we ran from here to there and the lights flashed and the sadness inside me receded, like the slipping of the waves as they approach low tide.

  “What next?” she asked.

  “I could use a break,” I said.

  “Me too. How about the Ferris wheel?”

  So we wandered all the way down to the bottom of the area where the rides were located, just on the edge of the Darkness. It was getting late, so the line for the Ferris wheel wasn’t very long—it was mostly made up of teenagers hoping to get some time alone with their boyfriends or girlfriends. Eventually Abra and I were in and riding to the top, stopping every few seconds as more people got on.

  The Ferris wheel stopped for longer than usual when we got to the top. It always sort of took my breath away, being up that high. I could see Kincade Road, and I followed it with my eyes to the main intersection in town. I could even see the antique store and the baseball field behind it, although the field was mostly dark. Cars were lined up on the street because of the fair, trying to get out of town, and their headlights and brake lights formed a perfect T where Kincade Road ran into Route 126.