Robert Walker - Shadows in the White City

A half-Spanish boy named Hector parted the younger children. “Angels look down from the tallest building in the city,” he began, adding, “always with green, pink, or a golden glow, and sometimes all three colors at the same time.”

“They eat light so they can fly,” eight-year-old Marty piped in.

“The angels use the Ward’s building’s lookout tower for their headquarters?” Ransom frowned at the notion.

Noel said it was so, as if discussing the price of eggs or the weather.

“You see, there’s a whole great lotta killing going on in Chicago…just like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, you name it,” added Hector. “Lotta kids getting killed all over.”

Eleven-year-old Audra solemnly added, “The angels study their battle maps all day long in the tower before they dare go out and kill demons. Hector ought’ve told you that first.”

“I see.” Alastair had never heard of this strange mythology; apparently every street kid in his town knew it-chapter and verse.

Robin now said, “You want to fight, want to learn how to live, you got to learn the secret stories. Else, you don’t stand a chance.”

Hector added, “Yeah, then’s when you disappear.”

“Gotta be on your toes at all times,” Noel said in a raspy whisper.

“You mean…or else you disappear like these kids the cops are finding dead?” Alastair asked.

“Sure…how else do you explain such things?” asked Robin.

A kid named Mickey added, “It’s the Judge of Hell and his minions against the angels. Simple as that.”

An older boy who had remained silent, sullen, wary suddenly piped up with, “Christmas night the year eighteen ninety-one, God ran away from Heaven.”

“God ran away?” Gabby asked, realizing the significance of this to the runaways. Their god was a runaway, too.

“Yeah, to escape a huge demon attack,” replied Noel. “Tell ’em Hector, Peter. Pete knows the whole story. He taught all’n us.”

Peter was the sullen one whose eyes had never left the adult strangers. He quietly muttered, “It’s a war…and the prize is Heaven.”

“A celestial war,” gasped Jane.

Peter continued. “Yeah, and it’s filled me with caution…caution of everyone-including you people.”

An excited Audra blurted out, “The demons smashed God’s palace of beautiful blue-moon marble to dust and ashes.”

“Audra! You’re gonna shut up now!” ordered Robin.

“What’re you afraid of, Robin?” asked Jane. “We’re here to help you, not harm you.”

He snorted in response. “Your damned newspapers, the Herald, the Tribune, they don’t print a word of what really matters.”

“You’re right about that,” said Alastair, thinking how little play the problem of the homeless got in the press.

“Th-they all keep it secret,” added Noel. “Tell ’em, Robin. Tell ’em!”

“Shut up, Noel!” ordered Peter, who seemed Robin’s second-in-command.

Robin stepped ever closer to Gabby, ending so close in fact that she became uncomfortable from his odors and body heat. “No one knows why God’s left us and his own angels to defend this world, but it’s what we gotta do.”

The others cheered this.

Jane Francis, as a woman, a mother, and a doctor felt stunned at these revelations, that children so young were coping not only with the streets but with a war between Heaven and Hell, and they found themselves square on the battlefield-their little souls being tugged in both directions.

Alastair’s thoughts proved similar. These homeless kids not only faced the horrors of the real world, but for some bizarre reason, they had created a mythological world of gods and demons at war over their heads, angels perched atop the Montgomery Ward Tower, riding the Ferris wheel at the fair, lighting on telegraph wires, riding atop trolleys. All this while demons emerged out of holes, sewers, broken windows, and mirrors.

“What do you make of all this?” Alastair whispered in Jane’s ear.

She whispered back, “I suspect it is how they cope.”

“With reality, you mean?”

“It allows them to understand the daily terror. If one of them disappears, he’s accepted comfort and aid from the enemy. In this case, Satan.”

Overhearing, Robin declared, “Temptations are everywhere, and so are the portals to Hell.” Using his scepter, he pointed to an abandoned train car, its doors standing open like a giant maw. “The devils sometime offer us safety, a warm place to sleep, a scrap of food, and sometimes the angels don’t have nothing to counter it with.”

“We’re not with Zoroaster,” said Jane, “I assure you.”

“Demons oft take a pleasant form.” Robin glared at Jane.

“And they’ve taken control of the sewers and Ghost Town,” blurted Noel.

“Ghost Town?” asked Gabby, who’d been absorbed, intent on every word.

“Street lingo for County Cemetery,” explained Ransom.

Something in his tone caused a scowl in Robin. The others instantly felt his displeasure, and when he turned his back on Ransom, Jane, and Gabby, stepping off, scepter in hand, the others sheepishly followed after King Robin.

“Demons feed on darkness and ignorance,” said Jane like an epitaph.

Gabby added, “Jealousy, conceit, hatred fear, prejudice, bigotry.”

“Or any negative anything…” added Alastair as all three watched the children go.

“Like when you can’t stand yourself,” Jane said.

He looked at her realizing how much alike the two of them really were. “Or your own kind…”

“But you can’t get away from who you are, now can you?” she asked.

Gabby suddenly rushed a few steps toward the retreating children. “Wait! You can change things!” This while the children continued disappearing before their eyes. She took a few more tentative steps toward them, seeing Audra lingering behind. “You can build on things, travel, learn, get an education!”

No one stopped to listen, and Gabby watched as Audra dropped the doll she’d given her. Audra didn’t look back. The doll might be a trap, so she instead raced to catch up to King Robin and the tribe.

Jane went to Gabby, crouched and lifted the soiled doll, and handed it to her daughter. “Audra may be back for this some day.”

“You think so, Mother?”

“There’s always that hope.”

Mother and daughter hugged, and Alastair saw Audra, just before the tribe disappeared around a final corner, look back to see the embrace.

Slowly, reluctantly, Alastair, Jane, and Gabby picked their way over broken glass, discarded paint buckets, soiled bedding, cardboard boxes, boards, and brick to finally set foot on a clean street and out from under the viaduct.

Alastair grumbled, “They didn’t say a bloody word about Bloody Mary.”

“They’re afraid to say her name out loud,” replied Gabby.

“Then what makes Audra so brave?”

“Her father was a soldier in the war.”

“An angel in the war between good and evil, you mean?” asked Ransom, trying to quash a grimace.

“No, the War Between the States.”

Audra surprised them all when she showed up the following day and knocked at Jane’s and Gabby’s door. Ransom was having breakfast with Jane when the girl was ushered in by a smiling, elated Gabby. “I knew she’d come back to us!”

“We can meet with Danielle’s coven,” Audra informed them.

“Really?” asked Alastair.

“Danielle’s coven?” Jane inquired.

“They stay close to the Salvation Army’s emergency shelter. Can we have another carriage ride there?”

“First a bite to eat,” suggested Gabby, seating Audra before a plate of warm pastries.”

While Audra devoured her roll and juice, Gabby rushed out and returned with her doll. Audra and Gabby hugged at the three-way reunion, the doll squished between the young people. It made Jane laugh and Alastair smiled his approval.