Marc Zicree - Angelfire

“What then?” I asked, hoping maybe the answer would shed some light on our mysterious benefactor.

“I asked him that myself, son. He said you and him had something in common. And before you ask-no, he didn’t say what. And before you ask-I can’t ask him, ’cause he’s gone.”

Colleen and I exchanged glances. “Gone? Gone where?”

“Moved on. I think he’s looking for something, too. Maybe that’s what you have in common. Hope he finds it, whatever it is. Hope both of you find it.”

So much for tidy conclusions. Only on TV does the masked man come out of the shadows and reveal himself to be your long-lost cousin, or the twin brother you never knew you had, or Batman. TV was dead, maybe forever. I was disappointed, but not surprised that its conventions didn’t operate in the real world, if they ever had.

I also wasn’t surprised when Enid pulled me into the dim little hallway behind Jelly’s bar to tell me he wanted to take the flares back to the Preserve. The pain of losing Magritte was etched on his face. His mouth, for which laughing had seemed the most normal state, drew downward at the corners. I was amazed he was still on his feet, still jamming the Source.

“I’m sorry, Cal,” he told me. “It’s just something I feel I gotta do. For Maggie. For the other ones like her. And … for the folks I screwed up back there. Maybe there’s something I can do for them, too, now that I’m clear. I know that don’t make sense, but seems like I ought to try.”

I understood. In fact, it seemed like the most logical, practical, humane thing to do. “It makes sense,” I said. “And I know it’ll make Mary happy.”

“You all could come back with us.”

I shook my head. “I can’t. But, hey, you ask the others. Maybe they’ll want to go.”

He gave me a weird look. “You crazy? You don’t believe that. They’d never leave you. Not in a million years.”

I knew that. Maybe it was the only thing I knew with any certainty, when it came right down to it.

“Something else I gotta tell you before I crash and burn.” He rubbed a hand over his eyes. Even in the feeble light that filtered through from the bar, I could see they were bloodshot and red-rimmed from tears and exhaustion. “That guy Clay, the guy on that badge you showed me? I met him before. Just didn’t recognize him. He was one of the maintenance guys at Primal. I seen him working around there when I done some late session work. Funny about all that, ’cause I’d swear the guy wore makeup, even back then.”

Clayton Devine had twisted before the Change. And come here. From Rapid City, South Dakota. Which meant, what? That the Change had happened there first? By how long? And why? I tried to wrap my mind around that and failed. It made me recognize how close to crashing and burning I was.

“Enid, you’re going to have to sleep sometime. Who’s going to shield the flares when you do?”

“I am.” Venus appeared in the hallway behind Enid and moved into our puddle of light.

I swear all I could do was stare at her. “You’re a musician?” I meant “a tweaked musician” but didn’t want to say it.

“I was. Vocals, keyboards. My … Charlie played horn. We’d just signed with Primal Records when everything changed. We got stuck here on the inside. When Charlie… when I saw what happened to Charlie, the music in me just dried up. Just stopped. I haven’t written or sung a note since the Change.”

Enid shook his head. “God Almighty, I only been holding it in since Wisconsin. I can’t even imagine.”

“You’re Vanessa Gwinn,” I guessed.

She nodded.

“She’s going back to the Preserve with us,” Enid told me, then hesitated. “Look, Cal. I owe you…”

I shook my head.

“Yes,” he said, “I do . I’m free because of you guys. After I get them all home safe, I’ll come find you. Catch up.”

I started to answer him, realized I didn’t know what to say. I wanted him to find us, but how likely was that, really? I nodded, mute.

He put a hand to my shoulder. “Take your own advice. Man’s gotta sleep sometime. That includes you.”

Man’s gotta sleep . I was terrified of sleep. How badly I needed it, I only realized when I sat down to consider where I would sleep. Most certainly not in the room I’d slept in last night, nor in that company. The thought of sharing a room with Doc and Colleen made me feel like a teen who’s terrified of what he might catch his parents doing. What did they call that?

A “primal” moment?

I started to laugh. Sitting alone in a corner of the restaurant with the murmur of other people’s lives going on around me, I laughed. I caught Jelly gaping at me from behind his bar. But that only made the laughter more fierce.

Then, when I thought I would never stop, the tears finally came.

GOLDIE

They say the ritual of burying or burning the dead gives a sense of closure. I’ve never known that to be true. Not when I sat shiva for my grandfather. Not for all the deaths since. Most especially not now.

I’m familiar with the phases you supposedly go through. Denial, anger, grief, acceptance, whatever. I don’t know what phase I’m in as we stand out in Grant Park under a clear dawn sky with dew scattering jewels across grass and lake and watch Magritte burn. The packet of twisted contracts burns with her.

God, that sounds wrong. It isn’t Magritte we burn. It’s a shell Magritte lived in for twenty-two years and then abandoned.

That’s Denial talking. Anger is the next scheduled speaker. I think I feel it coming on as I murmur kaddish, a prayer that I am now sure is more for the living than for the dead.

So, we are standing here and Enid and Venus are crying out the blues-he for Magritte, she for her lost Charlie. All the words have been said and Maggie’s embers rise on a slight breeze-bright little birds freeing themselves from gravity for the last time. And I am a black hole. I suck light in, but no light comes out.

The air is chill and tastes like snow and ash on the tongue. Already the clouds have banked to the north, hesitant, as if unable to believe Chicago is once again open for their trade.

Away to the west I can hear the Voices again, dark and insistent, clear as this day, no longer muddled by Clay’s Black Tower. But I still have the nightmare, because my Black Tower doesn’t stand at the corner of Dearborn and Randolph. My Black Tower, like the Kingdom of God, is within.

And as I stand at Magritte’s pyre with the music draining away and my friends standing close beside me and watching me with apprehension, I think perhaps her death here and now is a good thing. She will never look at me the way Cal is looking at me, the way Doc and Colleen are looking at me. She won’t have to watch me become whatever it is I am becoming.

People are wandering away from the park now. Even Enid and Venus are taking their leave-along with the inscrutable Howard, who will also return to the Preserve, and who, I’m forced to admit, grows on you like fungus.

This morning, as we laid wood on the pyre, he came to Cal and said, “Enid says once we get angelfire to the Preserve, we’ll catch up to you.” He moved in close and fixed Cal with those bulgy, marble eyes and added, “We will . Sometimes miracles happen.” He held up his hand, turning it back and forth in the sunlight, and it seemed to me it looked more human.

“Yeah,” Cal said. “Sometimes they do.” They were words of hope, but I saw little of that in his face. And he wasn’t looking at Howard when he said them; he was looking at Doc and Colleen, who seem reluctant to stray more than three feet from each other today. I recognized what I saw in his face then-loneliness.